[Solved] Symbols font on Windows 8.1

[Hagar Delest]

Hi to everyone

I am having an issue with OO formulas when using OO in Windows 8.1. It seems that Windows 8.1 introduced some changes on fonts and formulas are shown different as they are supposed to while using OO. That happens in every product of OO and it is specially annoying on OO Impress because a slide show presentation shows these formulas improperly. It is important to notice that when I use built-in Export as Pdf, the *.pdf file created doesn't have this error and shows formulas as Windows 7. It also occurs when opening files (on Windows 8.1) created with OO 4.0.1 on Windows 7.
I already filed a bug report, (Bug 124203) with no luck! I attached a view of what I mean with that bug.
I'd appreciate any answer anyone can give me.

Sincerely yours

Mijaplex

[regina]

It is a wrong font. Open Math and look in menu Format > Fonts, which font is used for variables, functions, numbers and text in the upper part. Make sure that this font is installed.
But some characters come from OpenSymbol. I assume, that you have already checked, that OpenSymbol is properly installed. I don't know why it is not used. You can try to use the replacement table to force AOO to use OpenSymbol. Therefor you have to identify which font is used.
Please write in Math the special characters: int, partial, lambdabar, Im, aleph, all in large, and post the picture. These characters are all very special and so we might be able to help you to identify the font. To me "Segoe UI Symbol" seems do be a candidate.

[Mijaplex]

Thank you very much for your answer. I really don't know how to check OpenSymbol Installation. Anyway, I attached the symbols you asked and the current fonts used (for what I see, it is using Times New roman as it was on Windows 7). Why built-in Export as pdf has the correct fonts being the same products?

Thank you again.

Mijaplex

[regina]

I'm sure now. lambdabar belongs to "OpenSymbol" and the others belong to "Segoe UI Symbol". So OpenSymbol seems to exist on your PC. But I do not know, why it is not found in Math. Perhaps you ask in a Windows 8 forum how to deinstall and reinstall fonts, or whether there exists something like a repair for fonts.

You can now try to use replacement table in Tools > Options > OpenOffice > Fonts. Check "Apply replacement table". Select "Segoe UI Symbol" left in list "Font", and "OpenSymbol" right in list "Replace with". Click green Apply check. Then the pair is listed and you can check "Always". Examine, whether this gives you the right appearance of the formulas. This is only a workaround, but without access to your PC it is hard to tell, why the correct font is not found.

[Mijaplex]

Thank you very much

I found opens___.ttf on Windows/fonts but not anywhere in OO installation directory, is that Ok? I also try the replacement table, it didn't work, I will try re-installing OO in advanced mode, perhaps there's something I am missing.

Thank you anyway,

Mijaplex.

[keme]

... I found opens___.ttf on Windows/fonts but not anywhere in OO installation directory, is that Ok?

That is exactly where it should be. All fonts should be in the system designated fonts folder, so all applications will know where to search for them.

[martin_g]

Here comes the solution for the OpenSymbol problem on Windows 8: A modified version of the .ttf-file -- see attachment.

[Mijaplex]

Thank you very much, I will try it and I'll let you know.

[Mijaplex]

Thank you very much martin_g

It solved it. In fact I left OpenOffice because of this problem. I even reported this as a bug but nothing has changed on the 4.1.1 version. To me is a major failure, I wouldn't use this on a presentation, I was using the old Power Point for this. Thank you again.

Best Regards!

[martin_g]

In the last version the glyphs "underbrace" and "overbrace" were still missing.
I've added them in the attached version 3.

[Mijaplex]

Ok, I didn't try under/overbrace,I was too focus on integrals and partial derivatives. Thank you very much.
Best>

[72julien350]

Thank you for this font.
I have installed it, but now <= (leslant) et >= (geslant) ne fonctionne plus.
Am I the only one to have this problem with this font (version 3).
I use Windows 10.

[martin_g]

I have installed it, but now <= (leslant) et >= (geslant) ne fonctionne plus.

Unfortunately you're right. I didn't add these symbols (less or equal / greater or equal, with a slanted line under < and >) to the patched Open Symbol font.
I'm going to fix this in the next days. Meanwhile you can use "<=" and ">=" instead of "leslant" and "geslant".

Am I the only one to have this problem with this font (version 3).
I use Windows 10.

No, I can reproduce it with Windows 10. But with Windows 8.1 these symbols don't look so ugly, see attached screenshot.

[martin_g]

Try the attached version 4 of my patched OpenSymbol font -- now including "leslant" and "geslant" (unicode 0x2a7d and 0x2a7e).

[72julien350]

It is work. Thank you very much pour your work and your speed.
It will symplify my life.
Thnak you very much

[rafang]

Hi! I still have a problem with bra and ket relations. The images show how the font is shown and how it should be like. Thank you in advance! Do you know any kind of tutorial to create these files? I can only imagine that this should be kind of hard to do.

This is the way it is shown.

Sem título.png (5.47 KiB) Viewed 27886 times

And this is how it should be like.

Sem título1.png (4.62 KiB) Viewed 27886 times

[v.dujardin]

Hi,

thanks a lot for the updated police : that saved all my existing documents, almost !

I still do have issues with the vector arrows. They used to be nice looking, and turned to be ugly with win8 and win10.

I tried to cope with widevec instead of the efficient ctrl+shift+vec shortcut, but still not satisfied.

Depending on the letters, some arrows cover only the fisrt letter of a vector (A instead of AB), or are so close from the top of the letters that letters and arrow are merged.

Any fix for that ? That would save my geometry course documents.

Vincent

Nb : new on this forum...

[martin_g]

I've added some further glyphs (including vector arrows) in my font file. This may solve your problem.
Additional hint: Sometimes it helps to double-click on the formula (so the formula editor is opened) and to leave the formula editor instantly. Then the formula is re-rendered and when you save the document it will be shown correctly next time you open it.

[v.dujardin]

Thanks a lot Martin. Nice looking (and thus correct) vectors now, thanks to you !

I did try to re-render formulas, and it worked many times, but not for the vector arrows.

Vielen dank, and viel Spass !

[poverello]

Hello Martin, hi all,

thanks for your efforts, I installed OpenSymbol_V17_new6 and I get nice squareroots again. I use the latest version of LibreOffice on Windows 10. But I have a further serious problem, which drives me to despair (I am a teacher and really have a lot of files with formulas, most of these files I created on Windows XP): If I use your opensymboI-file, I cannot print greek letters (except for the letter pi). If I do so, my HP-printer just stops printing somewhere at the top of the page and hangs. But the letters are shown correctly on the screen. If I use the original Windows 10 opensymbol-file, I can print greek letters, but I have the known issues with squareroots etc. I am really desperate because I just cannot reasonably use the work of many years on my new PC. Can someone help me?

Thanks in advance
Christian

[martin_g]

... If I do so, my HP-printer just stops printing somewhere at the top of the page and hangs. But the letters are shown correctly on the screen.

My font file is just a very old version of OpenSymbol to which I've added several missing glyphs by copying them from the current version of OpenSymbol (distributed with Open Office and Libre Office). The only thing I've manipulated was the scaling of the newer glyphs so that they match with all other symbols. Unfortunately, I have neither the "source" of the font data nor the knowledge to change it.

In my opion it is now really time for the Open Office / Libre Office programming team to attend to this topic and correct the current version of OpenSymbol instead of adding further patches to my workaround!

Sorry, that I cannot help you to fix your printer problem.
The only idea I have is to print via Postscript -- if your printer supports that. (My DELL printer offers several Windows drivers, one of them is Postscript based.) May be this could solve your problem.

[poverello]

Hello Martin,

thanks for your answer and your efforts. By the way, the problem with printing also occurs when I export and print a PDF.

Anyway, I share your opinion that these problems should be solved as soon as possible. Whatever the reason for the problems is (Microsoft?, the Math package in OpenOffice?, ... ?), it is very annoying that users cannot use their files properly for so long.Therefore I consider to switch to latex, although I would have very much extra work by this change.

One more question: Do you have an idea how to find out if a solution to these problems is planned?

Thanks a lot
Christian

[martin_g]

One more question: Do you have an idea how to find out if a solution to these problems is planned?

I've filed a bug report in 2014 and there is a similar report here but till now there seems to be no progress. (My bug report was not even confirmed yet!)
In my opinion it is really a serious bug and I cannot understand why no one of the OO community attends to that problem. Probably all OO programmers use Linux or Mac OS and avoid Windows.

Martin

[macjaeger]

I just registered to do two things:

First of all, to thank Martin for the great work - your font saved my day a couple of times now!

And second, to add a tiny piece of information i just found out the hard way, that is, by trial and error: It seems like gpu acceleration also plays into this particular issue!

Backstory: i had recently upgraded to a new computer and all of a sudden all my carefully crafted pages full of complex formulae looked ugly, to say the least. I read all i could find about this problem and found Martins fonts, which seemed to solve most problems; yet still there where some issues, especially with square roots and large brackets. But strange enough, those only occured on screen, not on paper, and only with LibreOffice, not OpenOffice. So i looked for different settings in both suites, and found the difference in the "graphics acceleration" settings: OpenOffice had the acceleration disabled completely, LibreOffice had it turned on and OpenGL was activated. Disabling OpenGL finally solved the problem!

This may not occur on all systems, depending on graphics card and driver version, but if you still have problems with formula-rendering, disabling OpenGL might be worth a shot!

Sincerely,
M. Jäger

[WGP71]

I agree with Martin that it is remarkable the community is not discussing the problems with the OpenSymbols. The solutions provided with the square root are fairly ok (thanks for that), but the new OpenSymobos set also introduces other new looks for other symbols like the sum-operator (thicker lines / looks bold). In addition the vec{ <> } doesn't work with this set. So, it solves some issues, but not everything. In preparation of writing new teaching scripts I might consider changing back to Latex on my Windows computer, or is there any progress on this issue?

[22878]

I've added some further glyphs (including vector arrows) in my font file. This may solve your problem.
Additional hint: Sometimes it helps to double-click on the formula (so the formula editor is opened) and to leave the formula editor instantly. Then the formula is re-rendered and when you save the document it will be shown correctly next time you open it.

Great job, Martin, but I think there is still a problem with scaled square brackets. Can you fix this?

[martin_g]

I will have a look on it but I'm not sure that it can be solved as easily as replacing other "simple" symbols because the brackets are not simply scaled but stretched vertically. In fact I do not really know how Open Office manages this type of scaling -- perhaps it is a set of 3 symbols: lower edge, middle part (which is stretched) and the upper edge.
As already mentioned, the best thing would be if someone of the developers community removes the few bugs in the Open Symbol font delivered with Open Office / Libre Office. If you load the original font in any font editor you get several warnings regarding inconsistencies. But I have neither the source of this font nor the knowledge to correct these bugs. The font engine of Windows 7 (and older versions) tolerates these bugs but the new font engine of Win 8 and 10 doesn't.

[martin_g]

I've replaced the symbols 0x23A1 ("left square bracket upper corner") to 0x23A6 ("right square bracket lower corner") in the font file but in OpenOffice formulars the result is unfortunately still the same. As I said: it is not that easy with this stretched brackets. It's difficult to find out which glyphs OpenOffice actually uses for these brackets.

[reliagility]

I am actually not surprised that major issues like this are systematically ignored, especially when the platform is Windows.
Microsoft has a very detailed and well known history of doing ethically questionable things.
My _guess_ is that Microsoft is influencing ($$$) certain folks to NOT fix OpenOffice issues on Windows - so you and I have to buy Microsoft Office in order to have a decent experience on Windows.