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adamklempner
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Joined: 28 Nov 2006
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 Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 12:25 pm Post subject: Number of words that fit on a line varies from OS to OS?? |
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I have written my Thesis is OOo using Linspire Linux. Recently I tried opening it up in Kubuntu Linux and the document looked vastly different. Then I opened it in Windows and again it was different than either.
All 3 OS's have the SAME EXACT font set installed. The Thesis only uses Times New Roman and Arial fonts. Here are three screen shots showing what I mean. And these are just of the title (imagine this on almost every line of the document; also ignore the fact that the zoom was a little different between the screenies):
Linspire:
Kubuntu:
Windows:
In Linspire my Thesis is 195 pages. When opened in Kubuntu it is 203, and Windows it is 205. You can imagine what this does to the document formatting.
The file is an ODT, and Linspire and Kubuntu are using OOo 2.0.3 and Win is 2.1. Is cross platform file sharing really this much of a disaster with OOo? I am surprised at the difference between Linspire and Kubuntu as they are almost the same flavor of Linux. |
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9point9
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| Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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This has been seen quite a lot and there are a number of reasons for it, largely to do with font drawing on screen. The same would happen in other multi-platform programs so it's nothing to panic about, it just shows how Wordprocessor files are dependent upon the environment they are running on (I've seen far worse errors) and there's nothing you can do about it besides making every computer exactly the same. This is why we need PDF.
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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| Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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There is an Option in Open Office Writer.org, Compatibility "Use printer metrics for document formatting." Selecting it makes a very slight difference to the onscreen formatting. Perhaps having that setting checked in all three Operating Systems would make the documents match.
Only a guess, but it is something to try.
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acknak
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| Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | All 3 OS's have the SAME EXACT font set installed. |
Are you absolutely sure of this? How do you know? It can be quite hard to tell. The common fonts such as TNR and Arial are, on Linux, often mapped to free replacements that are almost identical but may vary slightly in their detailed metrics enough to affect document layout.
On top of that, Windows and Linux have entirely different font-rendering code, and I have found situations where the two behave differently--although you have to go to extreme conditions to see a noticeable difference. The Linux code (Freetype) is also under development and so may vary between your installations.
I agree with 9point9: only PDF really guarantees constant cross-platform layout. |
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adamklempner
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Joined: 28 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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| acknak wrote: | | Quote: | | All 3 OS's have the SAME EXACT font set installed. |
Are you absolutely sure of this? How do you know? It can be quite hard to tell. The common fonts such as TNR and Arial are, on Linux, often mapped to free replacements that are almost identical but may vary slightly in their detailed metrics enough to affect document layout.
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This I am sure of, as I have installed the MS fonts into both Linux OS's from the Windows partition on the computer. (Linux does not come with Times or Arial). All 3 OS's are on the same computer. I set up OO in both Linux OS's to use TImes as the default basic font, and made sure there is nothing in the replacement table.
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I will check on the printer metrics for document formatting option.
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I am a little surprised that these files appear differently on different OS's as I routinely use CAD programs across Unix, Linux, and Windows without any such problems. I understand it may have something to do with the way the OS renders things, but I guess I expect something better from an ISO standard format...
Also, I made an error: Kubuntu is running 2.0.4 not 2.0.3. |
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adamklempner
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Joined: 28 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Bhikkhu Pesala wrote: | There is an Option in Open Office Writer.org, Compatibility "Use printer metrics for document formatting." Selecting it makes a very slight difference to the onscreen formatting. Perhaps having that setting checked in all three Operating Systems would make the documents match.
Only a guess, but it is something to try. |
It does make it different, but it does not make it consistent. Thanks for the idea. |
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9point9
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| Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 1:51 am Post subject: |
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| adamklempner wrote: | | I am a little surprised that these files appear differently on different OS's as I routinely use CAD programs across Unix, Linux, and Windows without any such problems. |
CAD is a very different concept. There you are dealing with Vectors with specified locations. In a word processor the text does not have a specified location in the file. The program itself calculates the position via word wrap which depends upon font settings for the machine.
| adamklempner wrote: | | I understand it may have something to do with the way the OS renders things, but I guess I expect something better from an ISO standard format... |
The fact that OpenDocument is an ISO standard makes no difference here. Text wrapping and position is not defined by the document itself. If you need that then you can't do it in any word processor format at all. You need a graphics format to do that and that is why we have PDF. It defines page layout so nothing needs interpreting by the application whereas any word processor using any word processing format does not take page layout from the file but calculates it itself. You would not want a word processor to define location in the file format as then word processing would be a very painful task. Just look at how a PDF turns out through any utility that converts a PDF to a word processor document and you'll see why.
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adamklempner
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| Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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Again, I understand that, but for something that is touted as being a cross-platform word processor, I figured that I could indeed do cross-platform word processing (not just viewing fixed uneditable pdfs). There is no mention on the OOo website or in the documentation which indicates that ODTs made in Linux will appear different to the majority of the rest of the world, hence my assumption that they would appear the same and astonishment when that was not the case.
So I guess there is no way to perform reliable cross platform word processing. That is a disappointment. Maybe the Linux distro makers need to standardize their font rendering and get it to match up with Microsoft's... I won't hold my breath.
Anyway, is there anyway for me to tweak OOo or Kubuntu to make it look like OOo in Linspire?
Last edited by adamklempner on Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:28 am; edited 1 time in total |
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geoff80fg
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:18 am Post subject: |
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Font rendering is a minefield. It often depends on whether things are optimised for screen viewing or for printing. I remember, not too long ago, when Windows programs used to give different results on Print Preview and when printed - which made Print Preview worse than useless.
Geoff |
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adamklempner
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:34 am Post subject: |
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| geoff80fg wrote: | Font rendering is a minefield. It often depends on whether things are optimised for screen viewing or for printing. I remember, not too long ago, when Windows programs used to give different results on Print Preview and when printed - which made Print Preview worse than useless.
Geoff |
Ugh  It seems silly that something as simple as making a letter on a screen can be troublesome... |
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9point9
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:10 am Post subject: |
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It's not something that is a simple as Windows/Linux being correct/wrong. Under Linux there are many different settings which the user can fiddle with. Distros just package up and configure existing software and some of them will differ in their font setup. Some of it is also to do with desktop setup.
Windows users are expected to be able to set up their desktops themselves as the defaults are never what any user would want to leave them at. Windows will almost always be incorrect for rendering on screen as hardly anyone has their screen metrics correctly calibrated. The desktop defaults to assuming 1 pixel is roughly 0.25mm yet most people don't run anything like that. There is an option somewhere to change this but it is best to ignore it as the Windows interface can go funny at other settings. This therefore needs the user to set their display to run at a resolution corresponding to a 0.25mm dot pitch to get correct scaling. Hardly anyone does this and although many TFT monitors (eg. 17", 5:4 aspect ratio, 1280x1024) have native resolutions that correspond to this, many don't. This is why I would never recommend a 19" 1280x1024 TFT for use under Windows.
Under Linux things are easier to calibrate correctly. Just look in your xorg.conf file:
| Code: | Section "Monitor"
...
DisplaySize x y
...
EndSection |
Where X and Y are your viewable screen dimensions in mm.
Have both of your distros got this set correctly? Many distros don't have these set at all by default as they can't reliably get this from probing the monitor. These do affect OOo as if you have it set incorrectly holding a piece of paper to the simulated equivalent on screen will give a size difference. If calibrated correctly they will be the same size.
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acknak
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 6:45 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | ... This therefore needs the user to set their display to run at a resolution corresponding to a 0.25mm dot pitch to get correct scaling. |
While certainly true, this only means that 1" on the screen ruler is not actually 1" if you hold a ruler up to the screen and measure it. The screen dpi setting scales everything on the screen proportionately, but should not affect OOo's text layout calculations.
One huge problem for FLOSS systems wrt font rendering is the presence of proprietary and restricted technology in the fonts and the rendering engines. E.g. Apple has patents that prevent some Linux distros from shipping full versions of the Freetype TTF renderer (I don't know what config OOo ships with). See FREETYPE & PATENTS.
I don't know what the status is for font-encoded kerning and spacing is; that would certainly affect text layout.
If you want to put together a small sample that demonstrates the problem, I think that would be a valid bug report. If you have the same exact fonts on two systems, you shouldn't get different page layouts. Whether it will ever get to that point in the "real world" I don't know.
PS: I see that this has been reported (more than once) and the active report was recently closed as "FIXED": Issue 60945: document line heights different for Windows<->Unix.
As always, it is difficult to tell what public release the fix will first appear in--are you using 2.1? If 2.1 still shows the problem, you could try the latest developer release. If your problem persists, I would add a comment to that effect at the bottom of that issue and see how the devs want to pursue it.
Last edited by acknak on Tue Jan 02, 2007 6:58 am; edited 1 time in total |
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JTill
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 6:58 am Post subject: |
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I'm curious if each operating system has the same default printer, and if this makes a difference.
J. Till |
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acknak
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 7:02 am Post subject: |
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| I think that was what Bhikkhu Pesala asked; the OP said it helped but didn't cure the problem. |
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foxcole
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 10:58 am Post subject: |
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| adamklempner wrote: | | Again, I understand that, but for something that is touted as being a cross-platform word processor, I figured that I could indeed do cross-platform word processing |
You are doing cross-platform word processing. Word processing is not the same as typesetting or page layout or desktop publishing. The words you lay into the document are the same no matter which OS you're using, and you can add and delete and change and rearrange and even format---i.e., process---the words on the platform of your choice. To get a consistent page layout and rendering, you'd need a program designed for that, and word processors such as Word or Writer or Works or WordPerfect are not designed for that... they're just authoring tools that happen to have some ability to format text.
Does that make sense? Word processors don't need sophisticated rendering because in the publishing world, that part of a text's creation is done in a page design or typesetting application by someone other than the author. In fact, many publishers have stringent requirements for what the text may or may not contain, and often retain full control over how the finished product will look. Unfortunately, people who are unfamiliar with publishing have greater expectations of word processors than the processors are able to deliver.
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