Bug 91407 - Hard to type name of uninstalled font due to zealous auto-completion
Summary: Hard to type name of uninstalled font due to zealous auto-completion
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
4.3.6.2 release
Hardware: Other All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Fonts-Name-Combobox
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2015-05-20 11:54 UTC by Milan Bouchet-Valat
Modified: 2023-05-10 15:07 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Milan Bouchet-Valat 2015-05-20 11:54:52 UTC
If you want to set some text to use Arial even though that font is not installed, you can simply type it in the font textbox. But autocompletion makes it very hard if you have a font called "AR SOMETHING": in that case, when you type "Ar", the text is changed to "AR" automatically. The only solution to really type "Arial" is to type something that doesn't match "AR SOMETHING", go back and type "Arial", and then remove the part of the text you don't want.

This example might seem a bit contrived, but it happens by default on Fedora 21 because of AR* uming fonts (Asian scripts) being installed.

To reproduce on 4.4.2.2 with only default fonts: just try to type e.g. "Ura" when URW fonts are installed.
Comment 1 Arnaud LE CAM 2015-05-22 10:01:14 UTC
I reproduce, but I think it's not a bug :
Why trying to force using uninstalled fonts ?
In case of using an uninstalled font, Libroffice will makes a substitution.
If you are searching for new functionality, I think you should probably ask the community for, in those too ways :
- add a customisable autocompletion function ;
- modidy actual autocompletion functionality.
Comment 2 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2015-05-22 12:09:32 UTC
I admit this is a corner use case, but sometimes you make a few edits to a document written by a Windows user which uses Arial, and while you don't have Arial installed, you still want that font to be used when you send the document back to it's author.

The cleanest solution I can see is to add the list of substituted (not installed) fonts to the autocompletion list.
Comment 3 Jean-Baptiste Faure 2015-07-12 17:04:18 UTC
Reproducible for me too. I see at least two workarounds:
1/ if you can't do other than to type the name of a non installed font, start with an underscore and remove it when finished
2/ in the use-case of comment #2, the document probably contain a style with the correct font, then use that style.

Set status to NEW and importance to ENHANCEMENT. That does not mean that a developer will necessary implement this enhancement, but only that this is a valid enhancement request.

Best regards. JBF
Comment 4 Buovjaga 2020-11-19 18:47:33 UTC
There is no proposed solution here, so this report is in a limbo state from a developer perspective. Calling UX team
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2020-11-20 10:50:18 UTC
Wouldn't touch the autocompletion, it's a handy feature. And JBF's suggestions are helpful too. 

But I also see no disadvantage of adding the manually entered fonts to the list so typing Arial the second time brings it up with the autocompletion.