[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 52225] Greek symbols default to non-italic, need additional control of the GreekCharStyle property

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52225

--- Comment #21 from john@curioussymbols.com ---
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #19)
> @john, *
>
> > added a screenshot showing the font alignment problem. I am reporting it
> > here because as with the Greek italic thing, there is no way to easily
> > change the font for all Greek letters at once. It is a very tedious process
> > using the buggy 'Symbol Catalog' dialog.
>
> Correct, changing individual fonts via Specialized Symbols dialog in the
> Math module is tedious--best to only use that to add additional defined
> symbols. As is IIUC your edits are changing the font used Unicode codepoint
> assignments found in
> http://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/starmath/inc/types.hxx

No, as noted at the top of that file, that file doesn't contain the greek
letters ('%alpha ... %gamma for example')

> Fortunately, substituting an entire font (as in comment 13 ) is trivial.
> Done from Tools -> Options -> Fonts: "Apply Replacement Table" checkbox and
> select OpenSymbol on left and a replacement font (Cambria Math, Asana, Stix,
> etc.) on right column--check button to add. Adjust the "Always" and "Screen"
> checkbox as preferred and then OK to apply. Reenter the dialog, select and
> edit to try a different substitute font (or remove to revert to default).

But this won't be portable... if I send my file to someone else, they'll see
the same broken OpenSymbol font again, right? Especially if they make any
changes to a formula. That would be rather puzzling for them, I think.

> > (1) Can I also request that we move from OpenSymbol to Liberation Serif for
> > the font? The kerning and font metrics stuff (I don't know quite the right
> > words) are all wrong for OpenSymbol and don't work properly.
>
> > To test/demonstrate this, observe the very poor formatting of the left most
> > '%nu' in the following:
> > { 1 over %nu } { %nu over {1 + %nu} }
>
> No this is an issue with positioning of nodes composed with OVER and the
> greek symbols--the baseline shifts. It is even worse on Windows builds with
> OpenGL rendering (bug 99351). But, it affects glyphs for any font family in
> use. Trying to fix this with a substituted glyph is the wrong approach,
> rather the positioning code for composing these types of nodes needs to be
> tweaked to compose correctly.

That doesn't sound right to me. When I use Liberation Serif, the %nu symbols in
the denominator all line up perfectly. When I use OpenSymbol, the denominator
is a  a mess. So, even though I don't quite understand the point you're making
about baselines, you can look at my attached screenshot and see that the font
family *does* affect this. (I can repeat the test with the same symbol in two
different fonts, but I didn't want to be bothered battling the Symbol Catalog
again -- please let me know if I need to do that and I will)

As I look at it, there seems to be extra information associated with the
symbols in the Liberation Serif font, and the equation editor is making use of
that extra information and the symbols look great. If I guessed, I would say
that there is information about the capital 'X' height for the font, and even
though the %nu' is smaller than the the 'X', the smarter Liberation Serif leave
space, but the more stupid OpenSymbol has only got the size of the immediate
symbol at hand to deal with, so it doesn't know to leave more space.

> > (2) If we are changing the defaults for Formula behaviour, please also note
> > that the default Formula settings add a large border/spacing around each
> > equation. The result is that the formatting looks terrible for in-line
> > equations/symbols.
>
> You can modify the spacing from Tools -> Options -> Advanced: Open Expert
> Configuration  and search for "StandardFormat", note you can make the font
> assignments (other than font used for the Greek Symbols) there as well.

Understood. The point is that the default setting is a bad default choice. I
can't think why anyone would want space like this around formulas. Neither for
in-line nor line-of-their-own nor "fn [F3]" numbered equations. My suspicion is
that the space was added as a workaround for some previous bug to do with
grabbing focus on objects with the mouse, or something like that.

> =-=-=
>
> @Takeshi -- couldn't we add a StandardFormat stanza to Expert Configuration
> to set the FNT_MATH, FNTNAME_MATH, FONTNAME_MATH variable there (default
> would still be OpenSymbol) and not have to depend on the Fonts ->
> Replacement Table mechanism?

That's right, the font replacement mechanism doesn't sound like a good option.
But I think the right option is to simply adopt a better symbol font than the
current default one (again, try the '%nu' thing above, so that you can see why
OpenSymbol is broken).

Thanks so much for your help and attention!

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