Bug 168371 - Setting character spacing does not disable ligatures in Draw and Impress
Summary: Setting character spacing does not disable ligatures in Draw and Impress
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.1.1 release
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Khaled Hosny
URL:
Whiteboard: target:26.2.0 target:25.8.2.2 target:...
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-09-12 10:26 UTC by Jacek Dobrzyniecki
Modified: 2025-09-30 11:24 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Screenshot: What the preview in the Character window looks like (468.69 KB, image/png)
2025-09-12 10:44 UTC, Jacek Dobrzyniecki
Details
Screenshot: What appears in the document instead (94.24 KB, image/png)
2025-09-12 10:45 UTC, Jacek Dobrzyniecki
Details

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Description Jacek Dobrzyniecki 2025-09-12 10:26:45 UTC
Description:
This is a bug I've noticed in LibreOffice Impress, running on a Mac. It seems to show up in LibreOffice Draw as well.

If you select a text which includes automatically added ligature characters (e.g. "fi"), open the Character window, and try to change the character spacing, the preview at the bottom of the window will display the spacing changing between all characters - including those comprising the ligature. However, this is misleading. Once you click OK, the newly changed text will be different from what the preview showed: the ligature will stay unchanged.

To be clear, this is not a complaint about ligatures themselves being unaffected by spacing (I know that turning off ligatures in the font avoids that). The issue is that the preview gives a false impression of what will happen.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run LibreOfficeImpress.
2. Create a new text box, type in a text which includes the letters "fi".
3. Select the text and change its font to Helvetica, DejaVu Sans, or another font which includes ligatures such as "fi".
4. Choose Format -> Character.
5. Go to the "Position" tab and increase "Character spacing" to 3-4 points. The preview at the bottom of the window will show the spacing between _all_ the characters increasing.
6. Click OK.

Actual Results:
In the document, the spacing will have increased only between characters other than 'fi'. This is different from what the preview window showed.

Expected Results:
The preview window should have shown that changing the Text Spacing option does not change the spacing within the ligature.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
Version: 25.8.1.1 (X86_64)
Build ID: 54047653041915e595ad4e45cccea684809c77b5
CPU threads: 4; OS: macOS 13.7.6; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: osx
Locale: ja-JP (en.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 1 Jacek Dobrzyniecki 2025-09-12 10:44:25 UTC
Created attachment 202803 [details]
Screenshot: What the preview in the Character window looks like
Comment 2 Jacek Dobrzyniecki 2025-09-12 10:45:00 UTC
Created attachment 202804 [details]
Screenshot: What appears in the document instead
Comment 3 Khaled Hosny 2025-09-13 19:04:57 UTC
Letter spacing should disable ligatures, and writer already does this, so the preview is correct and the actual rendering in the app is wrong.
Comment 4 Commit Notification 2025-09-25 16:52:56 UTC
Khaled Hosny committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/1bdf1e2d52a7fae3e1a58ddf15a7657df3d47004

tdf#168371: Disable ligatures in Impress/Draw with character spacing

It will be available in 26.2.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 5 Commit Notification 2025-09-29 14:14:41 UTC
Khaled Hosny committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-25-8":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/f1e35b8ffd498b2d390f50ae9816fe0d9c904a49

tdf#168371: Disable ligatures in Impress/Draw with character spacing

It will be available in 25.8.3.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 6 Commit Notification 2025-09-29 14:46:07 UTC
Khaled Hosny committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-25-8-2":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/8c96d9a4d556d48065fd58a82cce2029e767c861

tdf#168371: Disable ligatures in Impress/Draw with character spacing

It will be available in 25.8.2.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 7 Commit Notification 2025-09-29 15:45:07 UTC
Khaled Hosny committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-25-2":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/1c38d6646e93a7f282812563ff824db5980006e7

tdf#168371: Disable ligatures in Impress/Draw with character spacing

It will be available in 25.2.7.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.