Character spacing

[tays01s]

I've just upgraded from NO 3.1.2 to LO 3.5.4 and when text is justified, instead of having a wider space between words all the characters are spaced out. How do you go back to the former?

[Hagar Delest]

Can you upload a screenshot and a sample file?

[RoryOF]

Check your page size and margins. Possibly changed from A4 to US Letter?

[RoryOF]

Try /View /Nonprinting characters. If you see a left pointing hooked arrow at each line end, this is the problem. If so, come back for more help and never ever use Ctrl Shift Enter at line ends again!

[tays01s]

I can see the hooked arrow at the right hand end only, see attached. However, I only use Enter, never Ctl + Enter (incidentally it's a Mac).

Character spacing.png (27.94 KiB) Viewed 14031 times

[RoryOF]

/Edit / Find and Replace: in Find box "\n", in Replace box "\n". Leave out the quotes. Drop down More Options and make sure "Regular Expressions" is checked and select the find/replace/find all/Replace all buttons as you wish.

The \n in Find says to find line feed characters (Ctrl Shift Enter), which are shown by the hooked left arrow. In the Replace box it means "Paragraph mark".

I vaguely remember from dealing with a Mac some 30+ years ago that there is (was?) a difference in how Macs handled line ends/paragraph marks. Perhaps some Mac user might comment? Sometimes we get beginnning users who insist on forcing line breaks by Shift Enter, instead of leaving Writer to do the wordwrap automatically, hence my encouragement to eschew Shift Enter!

[lgusaas]

I vaguely remember from dealing with a Mac some 30+ years ago that there is (was?) a difference in how Macs handled line ends/paragraph marks. Perhaps some Mac user might comment? Sometimes we get beginnning users who insist on forcing line breaks by Ctrl Enter, instead of leaving Writer to do the wordwrap automatically, hence my encouragement to eschew Ctrl Enter!

On Macs it is Shift/Enter for a manual line break (also called soft return).

[RoryOF]

Thank you, lgusaas. You are correct - it was Shift Enter, not ctrl Enter, and I have amended the earlier postings accordingly. You can tell by my not remembering that I don't use it!

[tays01s]

I tried search for \n but found none. In fact the spacing problem disappears if I press Enter instead of having a space/word wrap. I attach a sample.

[RoryOF]

In the search for \n you must ensure Regular Expressions is checked on More Options dropdown on Find and Replace window.

Pressing Enter will work, but you have to position to each end of line and do it. Find and Replace for \n does it in the whole file.

[tays01s]

I've put \n in Find and Replace with Regular Expressions checked but there's nothing to find. Did you find it worked on the file I uploaded?

[RoryOF]

I didn't check - will try later.

[jrkrideau]

I've put \n in Find and Replace with Regular Expressions checked but there's nothing to find. Did you find it worked on the file I uploaded?

I think that one problem may be that there is some direct (hard) formatting in the table you supplied. Removing it cured the problem in the top left cell.

[RoryOF]

I've checked on my computers - the character spacing.odt file has been deleted in a daily clean up, so I can't check if \n etc is removing your line feed characters. I entered some line feeds on a dummy file and they were duly found and changed to paragraph marks.

[tays01s]

I've re-attached the .odt file.

[RoryOF]

This file seems to be the corrected version - it has paragraph marks, not line feeds.

[tays01s]

When I open that file in LIbre 3.5.4.2 the top line of columns 1 and 2 has exaggerated character spacing rather than wider spaces between words. It appears as in the attached screen grab.

[RoryOF]

Behaving well for me in AOO 3.4

[tays01s]

I don't know what to do then. Even a new file in LO, with a table containing justified text can create the same problem. It appears that Formatting is somehow set, when using justified text, to spread characters rather than words.

[lgusaas]

I get the same results as tays01s using Apache OpenOffice 3.4 and LibreOffice . The top line of columns 1 and 2 has exaggerated character spacing rather than wider spaces between words.

I haven't figured out what is causing this. There is a lot of manual override of styles in the document. I do not get the same results when I create a new document.

[RoryOF]

I took his document as it stands, making no alteration, and voila! I'm on an Ubuntu 11.10 machine and the font in use is Arial (from mscorefonts in the Ubuntu repository). I've tried a selection of fonts and behaviour is the same - large interword spacing, text not overspaced.

[jrkrideau]

I took his document as it stands, making no alteration, and voila! I'm on an Ubuntu 11.10 machine and the font in use is Arial (from mscorefonts in the Ubuntu repository). I've tried a selection of fonts and behaviour is the same - large interword spacing, text not overspaced.

I don't see anything but one or two interword spaces that are cured by removing direct formatting.

[RoryOF]

On his illustration earlier today it shows that interword spacing is normal, and the characters surrounding it are overspaced. My illustration of earlier today is probably what you are getting - larger interword space and character spacing normal.

[jrkrideau]

On his illustration earlier today it shows that interword spacing is normal, and the characters surrounding it are overspaced. My illustration of earlier today is probably what you are getting - larger interword space and character spacing normal.

Seems like it.

[RoryOF]

@tays01s: please try this - highlight the troublesome text, right click for Character (or /Format /Character), select Position tab, and see what the Spacing dropdown is set to. It should be Default, but may in your case be set to Expanded. If so, choose Default.

[lgusaas]

I took his document as it stands, making no alteration, and voila! I'm on an Ubuntu 11.10 machine and the font in use is Arial (from mscorefonts in the Ubuntu repository). I've tried a selection of fonts and behaviour is the same - large interword spacing, text not overspaced.

It seems to be a Mac specific problem.

I experimented in a new document using AOO. In a 2" wide frame I wrote some text, justified alignment. When i used a soft return (Shift/Enter on a Mac) in the middle of a line, the character spacing in that line expanded. Find/Replace using \n returned it to normal.

[tays01s]

The problem is that:
1. I didn't do a soft return. I just typed in the text and as it wrapped to the next line, the character spacing expanded to fill the line I'd just left. Eg. there was no soft return on the uploaded .odt.

2. The Characters are set to default, ie. it not an expanded text (even though it appears as such).

3. What is the 'hard formatting' that jrkrideau spoke of?

[willarob]

none of those suggestions have helped, i still have double spacing of characters.

[RoryOF]

Without having a hands-on sample file from you, we can do very little. Please post a short sample file using the posting link below the Submit button the full editor.

[mikez123]

Just showing the difference in display of justified text between AOO and NeoOffice, documents are ODTs - formatting is the same on both, no soft carriage return, all styles are as per Stylist=document formats no hard formats. AOO justifies paragraphs not only by word spacing but also by character spacing, plus it does not do it consistently.
See third colum with justified text.
AOO

NEO

Another AOO example with character formatting showing