Some unicode characters are not available in SLED

I just noticed that in LibreOffice and OpenOffice in SLED-11 SP1 some
unicode characters (Cyrillic letter Little Yus, Big Yus (unicode
entities for them U+0467 and U+046B, html: ѧ ѫ accordingly
and others) are not available in bold and italic. They are available in
browser (Firefox) though. Also I can easily create them and see in many
other Linux distributions with the same tools (Libre/OpenOffice) so it’s
a SLED specific issue. I noticed this behavior when I opened a file
created in Debian. And while there was everything fine in Debian I
couldn’t see some characters (until I disabled italic and bold) in SLED.
Is there a way to see them and print in SLED?


AlexDudko

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I can recreate that. Interestingly both those characters are available
in bold and italic in LibreOffice in openSUSE 11.4. The version/build
numbers in Help > About LibreOffice are identical. All the LibreOffice
packages in my openSUSE 11.4 are installed on my SLED 11 SP1 machine
(with the exception of a couple of icon packages and the openSUSE
branding package).
This makes me think the issue is outside of the LibreOffice, maybe font
packages, but I don’t know which one(s). I’m very hazy on language codes
and such for Cyrillic languages. Do you know which font
family/package/language code these characters come under?


mikewillis

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Well, this is definitely SLED issue, not Novell’s LibreOffice, because
as I’ve already written in previous post it occurs both in SLED’s
LibreOffice and in the latest OpenOffice, the same OpenOffice (the
latest one) which works in Debian without a hitch. I’ve been using
OpenOffice (LibreOffice) for quite a number of years and it is the first
time I have a problem with these characters. There are also some
problems with Diacritical marks, but I can’t say for sure which ones,
because I don’t have the source file at the moment. Actually, I’m
already used to know you may face a problem with SLED, as the most
unstable and unpredictable distribution (from my experience) you could
never even think about in another one.


AlexDudko

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I’ve just tried experimenting with this a bit more and narrowed down the
issue a bit. LibreOffice defaults to Times New Roman and with that font
ѧ ѫ don’t display in bold or italic. If I change the font to
Liberation Sans, both ѧ ѫ display in bold and italic. Does
that work for you? Liberations fonts are in the package
liberation-fonts. I also selected various other fonts at random and the
ѧ ѫ display in both bold and italic in them too. (I have the
free-ttf-fonts package installed which provides several hundred fonts.)

I haven’t been able to figure out what provides the Times New Roman
font yet.


mikewillis

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I’ve just realised I’ve been a bit thick here and didn’t check the
fonts. On openSUSE 11.4 LibreOffice defaults to the Liberation font. I
have Times New Roman on SLED because I have Microsoft Core Fonts for the
Web installed, which is not included in SLED. That’s why I found the
difference between openSUSE and SLED.

What font(s) are you using in LibreOffice on SLED?


mikewillis

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Yes, Liberation Sans is OK. But Liberation Serif doesn’t work. It was
Nimbus Roman No. 9 in the document which didn’t work either. I don’t use
Times New Roman and any other Microsoft fonts. But still there’s no
problem with any standard fonts which usually go with Linux
distributions. Only SLED has the issue.
Anyway, thank you for the tip with Liberation Sans! At least it makes
it possible to read a document if I change the font.


AlexDudko

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Try installing this package
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/suse/noarch/liberation-fonts-1.06.0.20100721-4.1.noarch.rpm
It’s the liberation-fonts package from openSUSE 11.4 and it’s a higher
version number than the one included in SLED.
Install it and then log out and in again. This fixed the issue for me
in Liberation Serif. Both characters were also OK with bold and Italic
in Nimbus Roman No9, but I hadn’t actually tried them in that font
before updating the liberation-fonts package so that may be unrelated.
On a machine without the updated liberation-fonts package the characters
don’t work bold and italic in Nimbus Roman No9 though.

SLED 11 SP2 is on the way, maybe liberation-fonts will get an update in
that.


mikewillis

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I tried to install this package with vendor change. But result is still
the same.


AlexDudko

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AlexDudko;2142888 Wrote:[color=blue]

I tried to install this package with vendor change. But result is still
the same.[/color]

I have reported this. Hopefully it will be fixed in SP2


Arnaudk93

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Arnaudk93;2143208 Wrote:[color=blue]

I have reported this. Hopefully it will be fixed in SP2[/color]

Thank you for help!


AlexDudko

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Hi, here is 5 cent for my SLED11 SP1:
Without mikewillis;2142638 Wrote:[color=blue]

installing this package
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/suse/noarch/liberation-fonts-1.06.0.20100721-4.1.noarch.rpm
both my Liberation Sans and Liberation Serif work OK for Cyrillic in[/color]
OpenOffice, as do Nimbus Roman No9.
However, many other fonts do not work with Cyryllic in OpenOffice, e.g.
New Brilliant, like MS Windows fonts in Word.


LLiner

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Just tried OpenSUSE 12.1. Everything looks fine there. Hope it’ll be
fixed in SLED soon.


AlexDudko

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