[Solved] Draw program and text turning to gobblydigook

[dwieber]

Working on a file in Draw on 3.4.1...saved my file throughout my work session. When I looked at the Page Pane after making several saves and edits, I noticed that most of my 8 page document was now a bunch of very scrunched up unreadable text. A whole paragraph of text is now saved as one squished line.
I tried "undoing" stuff but could not fix. After a four hour work session I have nothing and can't seem to fix the document so I can read it again.
I did use a "new to me" font that was in my font selector...Simple Arabic and Aharoni. The Simple Arabic showed on my screen as English and I liked the font...not thinking this is the problem but...did it somehow convert or try to convert to Arabic or is Simple Arabic a valid English font?
How do I re-do all my text boxes to make sense and show normally again? I tried changing the fonts to Arial..not working. Thank you.

[RoryOF]

What Save format? What ratio (roughly) of text to draw elements?

[dwieber]

ODF Drawing (.odg)

Text boxes 100% on 5 of the pages and up to 60% on the other 3. The 2 pages with more pics and other drawing elements than text boxes saved "ok"
I needed flexibility so used this program as I am redoing my website and wanted to mock it up here. Do you think I will be able to recover the intended text and fonts? Was the Simple Arabic font a problem? Or nothing to do with it!!!

[RoryOF]

The presence of "simple Arabic" as a font used in the file would suggest that it (or some component of it) might have originated on a Mac. OpenOffice does not embed fonts; if it finds that a font is used in a document and the font is not installed on the computer, it will use the closest match it can find for that font and won't tell you this is a substitute font. John_Ha recommends the Testfonts extension Testfonts which will give information about the system fonts and the fonts OO wants. "simple arabic" may also be requesting/forcing RTL text direction and if your OpenOffice is not set to allow that it might be confused.

I doubt we can advise to any greater effect without hands on of the document (or at least part of it).

[dwieber]

I will send you the doc in your email! Thank you...To be clear, I just used this font because I thought it was a western font..it looked good in my draw document..still not sure this is the issue! I worked on it all day...saved all day...and after a few hours it converted to the gobblgook you will see. I was unable to retrieve prior version before the mess. Thanks for the information!!! Again, I want a western font ... didn't even think it would be arabic converting to western english!!!

[RoryOF]

Having had hands-on of part of the file, the problem is nothing to do with fonts. The line lengths for text entered are too long (i.e., too many characters) and draw does not have the same wordwrap features as Writer, so one has to manage line lengths oneself. The long lines of what would be body text (i.e. a paragraph of text as opposed to a heading or title line) were being squeezed so that the line width fitted into the textbox. All other text in that same textbox was being squeezed by the same amount. I divided each long line up to about one sixth of its length by clicking cursor at those locations and pressing Enter. When I had the line so divided I clicked outside the textbox area and it was redrawn with the text legible. The existing text can now be copied and pasted or otherwise reformatted.

Edit: See Acknak's post later in this thread; he tells how to apply wordwrap in Draw.

[dwieber]

Thanks again! Please mark as SOLVED!!

[acknak]

Text boxes in Draw do indeed have word wrap. I can think of a couple of things that might interfere but nothing that should suddenly change on it's own.

The simplest thing would be if the text has no spaces, or if the spaces are actually non-breaking spaces. That might interfere with word wrap.

I think I'd need to see the document to make any further suggestions.

[acknak]

I think I'd need to see the document to make any further suggestions.

RoryOF sent me a copy of the file.

Select the text frame enclosing the text. Here's one way to do this: Click in any of the distorted text boxes. Press Escape (Esc).

Format > Position & Size > Position & Size > Adapt > Fit width to text: ON ... OK

[RoryOF]

Thanks, Acknak. I thought you might find a way. I'll correct my remarks above about Draw not having wordwrap.

[acknak]

I remember seeing this particular distortion: This might be useful for ... what?

I also don't know how the setting might change without the user being aware of it. It's conceivable that there could be a problem with saving/restoring this setting in a document. I've not run into it myself, though.