Hi Regina,
Terribly sorry about the delay in following up on your suggestions. I
didn't mean to just disappear like that. It's been a bit hectic here,
and I haven't had time to try with LibreOffice 4.1 beta yet, but I've
tried a couple of other things.
Firstly, I tried formatting the cell as a plain number, with
' " / hour"' after the default format, so the complete format is
#,###.00 " / hour"
This got changed over the save to
#,###.00" / hour"
Again, the space was removed in front of the quotes, and added
behind. Other than that, the "hour" wasn't mangled, I'm assuming that
the mangling is only because of interpreting it as currency symbols.
When I removed the extra space behind the quotes, but left it without a
space in front, it preserved that over saves, i.e. the following worked
fine over saves
#,###.00" / hour"
This is still rejected when I change to currency format.
Next, I looked at my locale settings. Under Tools|Options|Language
Settings|Languages I have the following:
Language of
User interface: Default - English (USA)
Locale setting: Default - English (South Africa)
Decimal separator key: checked : Same as locale setting (.)
Default currency: Default - ZAR
Date acceptance patterns: Y/M/D;M/D
Default languages for documents
Western: English (South Africa)
Asian: greyed out : Default - Chinese (simplified)
CTL: greyed out : Default - Hindi
For the current document only: not checked
Enhanced language support
Show UI elements for East Asian writings: not checked
Show UI elements for Bi-Directional writing: not checked
Ignore system input language: not checked
I tried changing the default locale setting to "English (USA)", which
also changed the currency and date settings. When I added ' " / hour"'
it again moved the space from in front of the quotes to inside the
quotes over saves. But now this doesn't mangle anything, I'm
guessing because it's using a dollar sign instead of an "R" as the
currency symbol. Changing the symbol to "R" by changing the format code
from "[$$-409]" to "[$R-409]" works if the locale is "English (USA)".
When the locale is "Default - English (South Africa)", changing the
currency symbol by changing "[$R-1C09]" to "[$$-1C09]" doesn't help
matters.
I also noticed that with a space either in front of the quotes or
moved inside the quotes to give a double space before the slash, two
spaces are shown before the slash in the actual cell. So the only way
to get only one space between the number and the slash in the cell is
to have only one space, either in front of the qoutes or inside the
quotes, but not both.
It feels like there are two bugs, the first is that over saves LO
doesn't preserve the space before the quotes, and moves it inside the
quotes, irrespective of locale, and the second is that when there is no
space before the quotes, the letters inside the quotes get interpreted
as control codes instead of as literal text, and this interpretation
depends on locale.
There was also some strange behavior when entering just a plain number
format, not currency. If I tried to enter a new number format by adding
spaces inside the quotes, without a space in front of the quotes, say by
setting the format to '#,###.00" / hour"' and then adding spaces to
make it '#,###.00" / hour"', the moment it became a new format (one I
hadn't used before), the preview changed to just displaying the number,
without any formatting, and if I clicked OK, this carried over to the
cell and reset the format to '#,##0 ;(#,##0)'. If, however, I didn't
click OK when the preview reset, and instead added a space before the
quotes, the preview suddenly became correct, and I could then remove the
space in front of the quotes and it would stay correct. Once I pressed
OK this format would get saved, and I could use it again without it
getting messed up. Likewise if I added a format with, say, 5 spaces
in the quotes and no space before the quotes, in this way, then went to
cell formatting again and removed a space to four spaces, this didn't
get messed up. But if I removed another space, to 3 spaces, which is a
format I had previously used, then added a space, the format would get
messed up again. It seems that there is some format interpretation
going on behind the scenes when a space is added that is not going on
when a space is removed.
I think someone needs to have a careful look at how this section of the
code is operating, there are subtle bugs in it.
I will try to install the beta as soon as I can, and will test again
and report back.
Thanks again for the help
Paul