Bug 160548 - Writer : by default, do not gray out non-breaking spaces (at least in french)
Summary: Writer : by default, do not gray out non-breaking spaces (at least in french)
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 58434
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.6.5.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2024-04-05 15:10 UTC by Bona
Modified: 2024-04-05 17:47 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Writer example with non-breaking characters example (34.99 KB, image/png)
2024-04-05 15:13 UTC, Bona
Details

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Description Bona 2024-04-05 15:10:11 UTC
Description:
This is a default options change suggestion. So, easy to develop, hard to decide.

In french, we use a lot of "non-breaking" spaces. Before this characters : ";", ":", "!" "?", "«", "»". By default, LibreOffice is shipped with this characters grayed out, that leads to a display hard to read.

I have asked to people around me : all of them wanted to disable this grayed out option and were revieled when I changed their parameter. ("Uf, thank you !! It was possible ??).
My daughter changed to MS Word just because of that (she is 18 years old, and did not even think it was possible to change that).

MS Word does not gray out those non-breaking spaces, at least in french (I do not know in english), which has to be considered : why Microsoft has chosen not to gray out ? I think there are right in that choice. I do think that this very little default parameter has a big impact in France : some people just leave LibreOffice for this mere but very annoying reason...

Of course there is an easy workaround. You can change this setting in the options (Tools/Options/Formatting Aids/Non-breaking spaces). That is what I have done (after being annoyed during years). But most people are not involved as I am in Open source sofwares, and do not even think that it could have a parameter for that. And in the end, some of them just leave LibreOffice, like my daughter.

You can find a thread with an example here (english) :
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/remove-gray-color-of-non-breaking-spaces-in-writer/22106

and there (french) :
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/writer-affichage-par-defaut-des-caracteres-insecables-mauvaise-idee-on-perd-des-utilisateurs/104317

Bona



Actual Results:
Non-breaking characters are grayed out (by default).
"Tools/Options/Formatting Aids/Non-breaking spaces" is ticked.

Expected Results:
N/A


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
With a fresh new LibreOffice installation, do not gray out non-breaking characters by default in Writer. So untick "Tools/Options/Formatting Aids/Non-breaking spaces"
Comment 1 Bona 2024-04-05 15:13:56 UTC
Created attachment 193516 [details]
Writer example with non-breaking characters example
Comment 2 V Stuart Foote 2024-04-05 17:47:22 UTC
Through the 7.6 build release <Ctrl>+F8 will turn off the field shading being applied to the NBS.

At 24.2 release they are not shown as field shading [1]

Bug 58434 remains open to move majority of non-fielded format marks to the <Ctrl>+F10 toggle. Removing them from showing with Field shading.

=-ref-=
[1] https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/154847
[2] https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/155019

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 58434 ***