Bug 168847 - Set Word compatible justification settings (max, min, desired) for a DOCX or a new document
Summary: Set Word compatible justification settings (max, min, desired) for a DOCX or ...
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.2.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: DOCX-Paragraph
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2025-10-14 09:32 UTC by devseppala
Modified: 2025-10-16 07:58 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Current dialog for word spacing settings (30.65 KB, image/png)
2025-10-14 09:32 UTC, devseppala
Details

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Description devseppala 2025-10-14 09:32:04 UTC
Created attachment 203317 [details]
Current dialog for word spacing settings

Recently Writer has been enhanced with a more advanced justification algorithm and custom word spacing settings (minimum, desired and maximum). 

The default space settings are: min=100%, desired=100%, max=100%

, which aling with the previous simple justification algorithm.

MS Word compatible settings are: min=75%  desired=100%, max=133%

I think it might be a good thing to softly direct the users to use the standard Word settings for compatibility and those settings are probably tested to work well in most situations. Without direction, the average user may end up with poorly chosen values that are not Word compatible. 

I propose that Justification settings would be added an "Word compatible" or "Advanced recommendation" button, that would set the word spacing setting to the Word compatible values. Also, some kind of warning (text, colour) of Word incompatible settings could be useful.
Comment 1 László Németh 2025-10-14 12:18:20 UTC
@devseppala: Thanks for the bug report and suggestion!

Importing the DOCX document created in Writer previously always enables the MSO-compatible word spacing. So the problem is solved after a DOCX saving and opening. There is still a minor problem here: potentially lost layout at the first saving. For a better interoperability, it's worth and it would be enough to set these MSO-compatible values as default for a new Writer document (as planned originally). I extend/modify the bug description for this, too.
Comment 2 devseppala 2025-10-16 07:58:14 UTC
Hi László, 

thank you for the clarification and all of your hard work on improving typography issues in LibreOffice. Your efforts are really bridging the gap between desktop publishing and word processing apps.

If the word compatible justifications settings will be the default in the future, then the separate button will probably be unnecessary. I think making the Word compatible settings the default is a good move, hopefully it makes in to the next major version of LO.