[Solved] Dots on screen are non-printable characters

[BubikolRamios]

https://file.si/LgLL/tmp.jpg

dots.jpg (8.33 KiB) Viewed 1984 times

These dots are actually not dots, they are non printable characters, if I copy that to some hex editor they turn out to be 0D0A.
i.e. 6dots = 0D0A 0D0A 0D0A
Any way to convert that to actual dots ?

[robleyd]

Perhaps you could upload the actual file so we can see what is in it rather than an image that only shows what you see, rather than what causes what you see.

[JeJe]

Some information here where the suggestion is to use a hex editor to do the replace:

http://www.maxi-pedia.com/line+terminat ... eturn+0d0a

http://www.maxi-pedia.com/carriage+retu ... d+problems

[JeJe]

Or you could try this macro on a copy of your document and see if it works.

Code: Select all

Sub Replace0D0A

 Dim vDescriptor
 vDescriptor = ThisComponent.createReplaceDescriptor()
 With vDescriptor 
 .SearchString =  chr(10) & chr(13)
 .ReplaceString = "."
 End With
 thisComponent.ReplaceAll(VDescriptor)

End Sub

[BubikolRamios]

Perhaps you could upload the actual file so we can see what is in it rather than an image that only shows what you see, rather than what causes what you see.

Sorry, my bad.

[BubikolRamios]

Or you could try this macro on a copy of your document and see if it works.

Code: Select all

Sub Replace0D0A

 Dim vDescriptor
 vDescriptor = ThisComponent.createReplaceDescriptor()
 With vDescriptor 
 .SearchString =  chr(10) & chr(13)
 .ReplaceString = "."
 End With
 thisComponent.ReplaceAll(VDescriptor)

End Sub

Seems does nothing on sample file posted one post before.

[Hagar Delest]

Can you say why you need to get those dots?
You could use your hex editor to get the number of dots and to copy paste them in the destination file and Find & Replace.

[BubikolRamios]

See secod line , "mehrj.", first dot after j actually means abbreviation, not spacing for text readability. Translating some specific text to readable local lang ....

[JeJe]

The dots between the j and 2 are a single tab character - to remove, change format menu/paragraph/tabs to Fill character - none for each tab.

Edit:

fill character to none and manually type some ......... if that's what you want.

(If you set the Fill character to a dot - then same thing, its still a tab.)

[Hagar Delest]

See secod line , "mehrj.", first dot after j actually means abbreviation, not spacing for text readability.

Then it means that the dot isn't there. I tried to add a dot and then copy-paste and id does paste. Meaning that the dot is lacking in the first place.

[robleyd]

The 'dots' are part of a style applied to those paragraphs, as you can see by changing the style to e.g. Text Body.

Are these samples that you show actually part of a table of contents?

[Bill]

See secod line , "mehrj.", first dot after j actually means abbreviation...

The first dot does not mean abbreviation if the dot is a fill character. The dot must be a text character. Writer won't highlight fill character dots when searching for text dots.

You can use Find & Replace to insert a text dot after alphabetic characters which are followed by a tab.

Turn on the Regular Expressions option in Find & Replace.

Search: ([:alpha:])\t

Replace: $0.\t

[MrProgrammer]

Thank you for the attachment.

if I copy that to some hex editor they turn out to be 0D0A.

That unspecified analysis with the editor which was used must be flawed. The document content shows that the portions which are displayed as dots are single Tab characters, not Carriage Return (U+000D) and Line Feed (U+000A). There is no period after the mehrj characters. Take a look. This shows how your document is stored in Untitled 2.odt. The techique is called XML and any unprintable characters are converted to a printable format in XML, for example <text:tab/>. If something looks like a space, then it definitely is a space.

202307241111.gif (99.7 KiB) Viewed 1341 times

The tabs display as periods because you've chosen that in the paragraph settings. If you don't want to see the periods, don't use that setting in the dialog.

202307241121.gif (68.67 KiB) Viewed 1341 times

.SearchString =  chr(10) & chr(13)
.ReplaceString = "."

Seems does nothing on sample file posted one post before.

That replacement won't change anything since the document doesn't contain the characters you're searching for. If it did contain Carriage Return followed by Line Feed you would have to specify CHR(13) & CHR(10). But it doesn't; it has a Tab character.

Any way to convert that to actual dots ?

There is no easy way to insert the correct number of text character periods into the lines so that the right margin is as specified. The correct number would depend on the other characters in the line, their font, their font size and other attributes, and distance between the left and right margins, intentation, numbering, etc. That's why Writer provides the Tab Fill character setting in the dialog so that the document looks and prints as if the correct number of periods were present.


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