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Help With Imprecise Cursor Location

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 9:10 pm
by surfbathing
Hi folks, I apologize if this is old news but I am going crazy with an inaccurate cursor in Writer. (And should come clean as a user of programs, not an understander of how the anything works behind the scenes — a relatively sophisticated user though who works in architecture and spends too much time with Vectorworks and the Adobe Suite, so I'm kind of capable.)

I'm doing a lot of editing and being able to precisely place a cursor for a selection is an urgent need; at the moment Writer is proving unusable. I have been through a 1/2 doze proposed fixes I found in the forum from toggling the hidden characters to ensuring Safari has no zoomed or reduced windows and others I can't recall at the moment. (Restarting the program, restarting the machine, are others. I have not reinstalled the program. And the issue follows me from machine to machine in multiple documents.)

The Safari zoom fix seemed to make things a little more accurate but not what I'd expect. My baseline is selecting type in Illustrator — am I asking too much of Writer? And if zooming a browser window can affect Writer how can I isolate it from other programs? Thanks for the help, I wouldn't post here but my editing work is important and the cursor accuracy is making extremely difficult and time consuming to do. Thanks in advance!
J

PS: It looks as if there is an update but my newer machine can't make the updater connect to the internet. I am returned a message:
Error reading data from the Internet.
Server error message: .

I'll track the update down and install it. Is this something that was fixed from 4.1.3 to 4.1.6?
Thanks again!

Re: Help With Imprecise Cursor Location

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:03 pm
by MrProgrammer
Hi, and welcome to the forum.
surfbathing wrote:I'm doing a lot of editing and being able to precisely place a cursor for a selection is an urgent need; at the moment Writer is proving unusable.
I've seen similar posts in the past, though can't locate anything now which offered solutions. From memory, I would suspect:
• Curly quotes U+2018 , U+2019 , U+201C , U+201D , typically obtained with Tools → Autocorrect Options → Localized Options → Single/Double Quotes
• Justified text, enabled with Format → Paragraph → Alignment → Options → Justified
• Non-printing character display, enabled through View → Nonprinting Characters

I've experienced this myself in the past on MacOS, but cannot reproduce it now with OpenOffice 4.1.5 and MacOS 10.11.6. I believe the situation improved after I disabled quote replacement (first item above). This difficulty seems to be limited to MacOS. It might depend on the font one is using. My default font is Verdana. You might want to see if the problem can be reproduced with the Guest User. [Tutorial] Mac FAQ Q28/A28.
surfbathing wrote:… ensuring Safari has no zoomed or reduced windows …
I don't recall that discussion. I find it hard to understand how Safari windows would affect Writer.
surfbathing wrote:It looks as if there is an update but my newer machine can't make the updater connect to the internet.
There are known problems with the updater feature of OpenOffice. I have disabled it in OpenOffice → Preferences → OpenOffice → Online Update. You can install 4.1.5. See Q03/A03. 4.1.6 seems to have difficulty opening some types of Word/Excel files, so if you use those formats, perhaps don't upgrade to that level.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

Re: Help With Imprecise Cursor Location

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:19 pm
by RoryOF
Might this be the problem with OpenGL on Macs?

Re: Help With Imprecise Cursor Location

Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2019 12:33 am
by surfbathing
Thanks MrProgrammer! I'll try your suggestions. The document does have justified margins, I hate to think that I've been suffering today with only a justified margin selection to make things right. I'll let you know how it works and download 4.1.5 directly from the Apache site as well. And RoryOF thanks too, but I have no idea what OpenGL is but am guessing that it's something well above my pay grade.

Thanks again for the input!
J

Re: Help With Imprecise Cursor Location

Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2019 12:40 am
by RoryOF
The setting for OpenGL fonts is a feature of OO for Mac. I am aware that it can cause cursor positioning problems, but it will need a Mac user to tell how to disable it.