Bug 161465 - Frequent Writer Crash when using Polytonic Greek font mixed with US Georgia font
Summary: Frequent Writer Crash when using Polytonic Greek font mixed with US Georgia font
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
24.2.3.2 release
Hardware: ARM macOS (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2024-06-07 23:54 UTC by John Baab
Modified: 2026-01-17 20:38 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
sample ODT (does not crash on Linux) (17.45 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2024-07-29 07:53 UTC, Stéphane Guillou (stragu)
Details

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Description John Baab 2024-06-07 23:54:14 UTC
Description:
I use Libreoffice for finances a lot (years) and Writer some since it seems to work better with Greek and Hebrew fonts than Apple Pages. In the past week or two I have started typing in help pages which mix Greek fonts and US Fonts, or Hebrew fonts and US Fonts. Every day or twice a day, LO crashes and wants to restore all the LO files I have open including Calc files. It has recovered but shouldn't be crashing so often. 
LO doesn't seem to crash when using Calc, but only when using Greek and English fonts on the same page (Polyphonic Greek, usually Arial, and Georgia or Helvetica for the English font). 
I am using an Apple Mac mini from 2020 with an M1 chip and using Apple Ventura 13.1. The Serial number starts with C07HT023...
To reproduce it, type an English word and then change the keyboard to greek by using the keyboard change item at the top, and then type a greek word ending in (the greek accent represented by the following English keys) ;, [, ], followed by a, u, or o, so that the accent appears above the vowel.

Steps to Reproduce:
1.To reproduce it, type an English word and then change the keyboard to greek by using the keyboard change item at the top, 
2.and then type a greek word ending in (the greek accent represented by the following English keys) ;, [, ], followed by a, u, or o, so that the accent appears above the vowel.


Actual Results:
Crash with a list of files to attempt recovery (all my LO files open)
Then they are seemingly recovered without problem, and all the greek words that I entered seem to still be in place.

Expected Results:
Simply save the files with the combined English and Greek files.


Reproducible: Sometimes


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
Build 433d9c2ded56988e8a90e6b2e

I couldn't come close to finding how to reset my user profile. Can't find the file for LibreOffice 3, etc.
Comment 1 m_a_riosv 2024-06-08 12:36:10 UTC
Please test in safe mode, Menu/Help/Restart in Safe Mode
Comment 2 John Baab 2024-06-15 22:11:01 UTC
I checked again and discovered a trick to always crash Libreoffice.

In Polyphonic Greek most vowels have accents, which don't seem to be a problem. However some vowels have two additions, an accent and a tiny iota character under the vowel. Libreoffice seems to crash when the two additions are used on the same vowel.

To test it, I used, in Greek-Polyphonic,

first a tau character (t) followed by an acute accent (semicolon) followed by a tiny iota character (shift [) followed by an omega character (v).

This seemed to crash the computer every time it was used though the correct character with the accent/iota was saved every time.

I tried it in safe mode, but it worked fine, and I tried it with other vowels as well but no crashes.
Comment 3 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-06-24 11:20:35 UTC
I tested with Ubuntu's Ctrl + Shift + U Unicode insert tool, with the following codes (followed by Enter):

1. lowercase tau: 03C4
2. combining acute accent: 0301
3. greek small letter iota: 03B9
4. greek small letter omega: 03C9

No crash. But that's not suprising as the iota is not a diacritic combined with the tau, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iota_subscript
So I tried:

1. lowercase tau: 03C4
2. combining acute accent: 0301
3. combining greek ypogegrammeni: 0345
4. greek small letter omega: 03C9

No crash either. (I made sure to use a font that does support that iota subscript, Liberation Sans.)

What do you mean by "Greek-Polyphonic"? Is that a specific font? If so, can you link to it? Or do you mean "polytonic"?

Are you able to share a crash report?
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugReport/Debug_Information#macOS
Comment 4 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-06-24 11:21:07 UTC
My version:

Version: 24.2.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 51a6219feb6075d9a4c46691dcfe0cd9c4fff3c2
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.5; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 5 John Baab 2024-06-24 18:58:15 UTC
Thank you for checking.

You are correct, it is "Greek Polytonic" (not polyphonic, my error).

With Greek fonts (and some other languages) the keyboard has a special set up so that if you press the key for an accent or other diacritic marking, and then press the key for the correct letter. The letter then appears with the accent over it. (I have no idea if it includes a backspace or something else.) This works fine for me. However, when I have two diacritics, like the circumflex accent which is the '[' key, and also the little iota which is the '{' key, the machine stops and must be recovered.

Your point about using another font was a good one.

I opened a page, set the keyboard to Greek Polytonic, and, on a new line, set the font to Liberation Sans. I typed in several accent combinations and nothing happened.

So, I went to another line below, set the font to Times New Roman, size 16, which is what I was using before, and it seemed to be fine. for a minute. 

I highlighted the two lines to erase them, and LibreOffice quit. For a moment, it just froze, and then as I was checking to see if I could save the file, it went into a recovery mode. 

So that seems a step forward, if the problem might be a font.


I should note that with these languages, usually the keyboard is set up so that you type normally, and just press the key for the accent(s) before the character and it all appears correctly. I don't know how to combine letters with the unicode tool as you can with Ubuntu, but it seems like the problem may be in the combination with the keyboard used with a language and certain fonts. (And maybe the Mac operating system, who knows?)

If you want, I can try other fonts, but that will take a while as I have to recover in those cases that have a freeze.

I just checked, and had to use 'Force Quit' to stop LibreOffice from just sitting there making the rainbow cursor spin. The report to send to Apple was offered, but it is pages and pages long, and didn't seem appropriate to append here. I can do it if necessary.  

Here are the last lines of the Apple Report

Model: Macmini9,1, BootROM 8419.60.44, proc 8:4:4 processors, 8 GB, SMC 
Graphics: Apple M1, Apple M1, Built-In
Display: KA242Y A, 1680 x 1050 (Widescreen Super eXtended Graphics Array Plus), Main, MirrorOff, Online
Memory Module: LPDDR4, Micron
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_wifi (0x14E4, 0x4378), wl0: Sep  3 2022 03:37:22 version 18.20.379.4.7.8.143 FWID 01-e3c71b50
Bluetooth: Version (null), 0 services, 0 devices, 0 incoming serial ports
Network Service: Wi-Fi, AirPort, en1
USB Device: USB30Bus
USB Device: USB Receiver
USB Device: USB 2.0 Hub
USB Device: Macally USB Keyboard
USB Device: Blue Snowball
USB Device: 2.4G Wireless Mouse
USB Device: USB31Bus
USB Device: USB31Bus
Thunderbolt Bus: Mac mini, Apple Inc.



Here are some lines that are repeated often, perhaps referring to a wait status or something.

Process:          seld [704]
UUID:             7187596E-5810-3998-83CC-CBDA6634D527
Path:             /usr/libexec/seld
Codesigning ID:   com.apple.seld
Shared Cache:     00A1FBB6-43E1-3C11-8483-FAF0DB659249 slid base address 0x1a3164000, slide 0x23164000 (System Primary)
Architecture:     arm64e
Parent:           launchd [1]
UID:              260
Sudden Term:      Tracked (allows idle exit)
Footprint:        3072 KB
Time Since Fork:  2466s
Num samples:      54 (1-54)
Note:             1 idle work queue thread omitted

Thunderbolt Bus: Mac mini, Apple Inc.
Comment 6 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-07-29 07:53:51 UTC
Created attachment 195571 [details]
sample ODT (does not crash on Linux)

Tried again on Linux, with Times New Roman 16pt, using the second sequence of steps in comment 3, resulting in "τ́ͅω" (that acute accent is rendered on the tau in Writer). No crash.

Can you test if the attached file crashes for you?

Please also share the full version info copied from LibreOffice > About (there's a button to copy the text).

Let's see if someone on macOS can confirm.
Comment 7 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-07-29 08:00:09 UTC
No crash either with sample document in:

Version: 24.2.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: b9485aad85c48b4444220279f5499908c52f00f5
CPU threads: 4; OS: macOS 14.5; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: osx
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 8 QA Administrators 2025-01-26 03:11:48 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 9 John Baab 2025-03-04 04:58:17 UTC
Sorry to be slow, so I might have passed the 30 day request because of travel.

However, I must say that my tests with Libreoffice 25.0.2.3 were very
successful.

That is, I tried five different fonts and in each one tried the "tau accent iota sub character omega" series, and never had a crash.

The five fonts tested were:

Liberation Serif,
Times New Roman,
Georgia,
Arial,
Sign Painter  (this font was like an italic font, but transcribed Greek, though the omega character with accents came out as a non italic font, but the computer did not crash).

I couldn't tell if I should label it UNCONFIRMED since it seems to be working, but thought that someone official might need to confirm it.

John Baab
Comment 10 QA Administrators 2025-09-01 03:13:17 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 11 Buovjaga 2026-01-17 20:38:00 UTC
Per comment 9, it seems we can close this.