[Solved] Issues with unreadable menus (dropdowns)

[GEEMac]

Hello,

I have been using Openoffice on various OSs From Win to Linux without issues for years. Thank you for an excellent office productivity package. This is the first time I have ever had any issues.

I am using OpenOffice 4.0.1 on Ubuntu 13.10 and installed as follows...
I downloaded 4.0.1 for Linux 64 bit English-US and un-archived the tar.gz to my Home folder.
While in the terminal; cd en-US/DEBS, sudo dpkg -i *.deb, cd desktop-integration, sudo dpkg -i *.deb.
All went well with the install and placed the icons in the Office directory as it should have.
Now here is where the issues start. I opened Writer and when I dropped dow the menues the text was corrupted with odd characters. I have three screenshots at 1920x1080 and too big to post for the detail. I will post one image and the link to the full images for clarity.
I am sure that it is not an issue with Openoffice but an issue with Ubuntu 13.10 and how it is using Java or Linux's version of Java. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

http://i40.tinypic.com/23ldyy1.png

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

See if that helps: [Solved] Language is Greek in menus.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the edit button if your issue has been fixed.

[GEEMac]

Thank you for the reply,

A improper language issue is not my problem here with Openoffice. What I neglected to mention is that the menus look fine and are in English until I hover over them with my mouse pointer then the words disappear or change to odd characters. Not only is the text changing, but the screen flashes black with each move of the mouse pointer to the point of locking the system up.
I have not had these issues until Ubuntu 13.10. Apparently Openoffice 4 and Ubuntu 13.10 do not play well with each other.

[RoryOF]

OpenOffice 4 and Ubuntu 13.04, Xubuntu 13.04 and Xubuntu 13.10 all behave well for me. What desktop theme have you in use?

[Hagar Delest]

The problem is not with the language but may be with the font. Have you tried to change it?

[GEEMac]

I tried the standard Unity and now using Cairo-Dock and I customized a Mac desktop type theme for it. It almost looks as if Compiz may be the culprit here. As for the font, I can't change it since the menu is a mess. As I mentioned the text is fine until I hover over it to select something then the text all goes bad along with the video going black, comes back then black again each time I move over a menu item.
It almost looks as a bad video card back in the day when the video memory goes bad. In my case all is well with other programs.

[RoryOF]

Try /Tools /Options /OpenOffice : View and turn off Use Hardware Acceleration and/or Use Anti-aliasing. You may need to completely restart OpenOffice after each such change to get it to take (including any Quickstarter).

[GEEMac]

{ SOLVED }

Thank you both for the help with this issue.

The first thing I looked for when this issue started was Hardware Acceleration and I turned that off. With or without Anti-aliasing it did not make a difference. There was something I missed though, it was "Screen Font antialiasing" which was the culprit. I turned that off and so far things seem to be stable now with the menus.
For now I can say, case closed on this issue. Thank you again.
G

[Zivatar]

Hello All!

I have a problem with my AOO4.0.1
The problem is : all the drop-down lists, and text fields behave as it can be seen on the picture below. Hardware accel is off, and switching antialiasing on/off does not take effect on it. Can somebody help me to solve this annoying problem?

Everything is welcome
Best Regards
Zivatar