MathType formulas messed up and not converted

[yesint]

OpenOffice Writer does not show and convert MathType equations correctly. When the .doc file containing MathType 5 formulas is opened in OO, all symbols of integrals, derivatives, sums etc. are missed or substituted by funny characters. As a result the formulas are messed up completely. The formulas are not converted to OO Math, but shown as figures (not editable) even if "convert math from/to MathType" option is selected.

This bug seems to be ubuntu-specific. Original bug sent to OO team was not reproduced (http://<email address hidden>/msg396313.html). However, it was confirmed in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10alpha, but not in Mandriva Spring (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=872833).
The bug exists even when the deb package provided on the OO.o website is used instead of the ubuntu repos version.

This bug is really critical for people, who exchange documents with formulas with collaborators using MSWord+MathType.

The test file can be found in original bug report (http://<email address hidden>/msg396313.html).

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in openoffice.org.
For future reference you might be interested to know that a lot of applications have bug reporting functionality built in to them. This can be accessed via the Report a Problem option in the Help menu for the application with which you are having an issue. You can learn more about this feature at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Pablo Castellano (pablocastellano)]

I can confirm it. Some characters are shown as question marks inside of a black square.
It can be due a missing font package.
I'm attaching a screenshot.

[Sancho Panza (prashanthr-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I have the same issue on my system. I do not know what additional information I need supply
to zoom in on the specific bug.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Does installing openoffice.org-math solve your problem?

[Sancho Panza (prashanthr-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

@Chris: Thanks, but openoffice.org-math was installed along with the entire open-office suite. So no,
openoffice math does not solve the problem.

[Sancho Panza (prashanthr-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

@Chris: Why was the status changed to new? Hasnt the bug been confirmed by multiple sources above (including me)?

[yesint (yesint4)]

I also wonder who decided to change the status to "new". The bug is now confirmed by many people. Could somebody start to work on it finally? This should not be very hard - everything works in other distros.

[Pablo Castellano (pablocastellano)]

Confirming again. Someone with permissions please triage this bug.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

I'll try to take a look at this under regular upstream OOo 2.4.1 soon and either reopen the upstream bug or forward it to ooo-build.

Thanks,

Chris

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

This isn't displaying right even in upstream's openoffice.org 3.0.0 for me at least as far as question mark symbols showing up.

[Arkashkin (arkashkin)]

I have ubuntu 8.10 (not the beta or alpha versions) with latest updates, and open office 3.0.0-2ubuntu, still have this bug...

[Waluyo Adi Siswanto (was-wlk)]

I have a similar problem in OO3 Impress. I am going to start using Openoffice in Ubuntu instead of MS Powerpoint. In windows, the formula is written using Mathtype. When I open *.ppt in OpenOffice.org 3 Impress containing Mathtype formula, they are just mess up.
I am attaching a minimal example of *.ppt.

[claus (claus-erhard-wimmer)]

Ubuntu 8.04:
========

- Numbers in formulas appear sometimes as greek letters, sometimes not.
- Original OO document, not imported from word.
- Modifications made with the page format.
- Not able to reproduce the error.

[Sancho Panza (prashanthr-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

@ Claus: The bug occurs when a formula created in MSword using the mathtype plugin is opened in OOffice.
The bug is not related to equations created within OOffice. This bug affects the interoperability between OOffice and MSword/Mathtype.

[Arkashkin (arkashkin)]

Hello.
I'm working with on Ubuntu Junty with Open Office 3.1 and I have the same bug. Open Office can't render Mathtype formulas correctly. It is very important to me and many of my colleagues to br able to read documents imported from Microsoft Word.

[Geoff Lawes (glawes)]

Hi all,

This problem is easily fixed. It is due to the fact that MathType uses the "Symbol" font which is not installed by default in Ubuntu. You need to install this font (attached to this comment).

To do so, download the font to your home directory, open a console and type:

sudo cp symbol.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ [press enter]

sudo fc-cache -f -v [press enter]

Restart OpenOffice and open a Word document containing MathType and your problem should be solved.

[Geoff Lawes (glawes)]

In addition to my last comment, you may need to set the correct permissions after installing the font. In a console type:

sudo chmod 655 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/symbol.ttf [press Enter]

Does anyone know, can we get this font included in the MS core TrueType fonts package to solve this problem once and for all?

[Sancho Panza (prashanthr-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

@Geoff:
Thanks for the effort, but your tips do not fix the problem for me. All the documents
that earlier had the problem still look the same in OO.o, including the sample file
attached to this bug report (http://launchpadlibrarian.net/22414413/minimal_example.ppt).
Does the above example attachement open correctly for you?

[Arkashkin (arkashkin)]

Thanks for the tip, but it didn't help me either.
When I open Geoff presentation file example i see alot of question marks and not the correct formulas...

[Arkashkin (arkashkin)]

Sorry, It is Sancho Panza's presentation file example...

[yesint (yesint4)]

The solution from Geoff does not work at all for me. I did all suggested steps and still see absolutely no difference in appearance of the equations.
However, I have a feeling that the solution should really be as simple as this unless the font is hard-coded somewhere inside OO...

Btw, this is very good that somebody finally started to work on this issue because it is really of critical importance for scientists, students and other people who should open formulas from MS Word.

[zegita (zegita)]

The attempt off fixing this gets a vote from me, as this is the only thing retaining me from using openoffice.

[Sancho Panza (prashanthr-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

There doesnt seem to be anything going on in the upstream bug report. Is this
going to ever get fixed?

As has been mentioned before, many users, esp. in the academic, research, university
environment do use a lot of equations and unless this bug is fixed, a valuable
user base will be lost or never captured.

[yesint (yesint4)]

It seems that academic community is of no priority for OO developers, thus such compatibility bug is simply ignored. This is sad. We gave up in our lab and installed MS Word under virtual machines on all computers. Few users are lost. Not a big deal of course, but I'll warn about this bug all my students (just because I don't want them to waste time on fighting with formulas) and they will warn all their friends, etc...

Such technically minor but show-stopping bugs has very very negative impact on the whole open source movement, not only on the OO...

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

I can confirm this bug in OOo 3.1 as installed in Kubuntu 9.10.

Unlike yesint, this was a showstopper for the pilot program in the Chemical Engineering lab and could not be resolved using VMWare. I have a lab of 8 computers waiting for this bug to be fixed before they can be upgraded to Kubuntu from Windows NT.

[alex_b (barth-alexander)]

The Geoff's solution solved the problem for me! (on ubuntu 8.04 and ubuntu 9.04)
(the fc-cache command was not necessary here)

Many tanks !

[Arkashkin (arkashkin)]

Stil doesn't work for me in Ubuntu Karmic, even with Geoff's solution.

To alex_b :
Do you see well the presentation file that Waluyo Adi Siswanto has posted ??
I think you just looking on a limited symbols file, because many of my friend have tried that solution...

[GrandVizier (grandvizier)]

I can confirm the bug on Ubuntu 9.10. Nearly all equations in Word documents are messed up with strange characters.

[tecurik (tecurik)]

I too can confirm this bug on ubuntu 9.10 with openoffice 3.1.1.

[Kissamies (senpaidude)]

Exactly the same thing happes in OpenOffice with openSUSE too. I haven't tried it in a year or so, so I don't know if it works in new versions, but I just thoght to let you know that this is not a problem _only_ in Ubuntu.

Because of this bug, I have to keep using Windows on my laptop in addition to Linux, since the equations must be proper when I give presentations... (yeah... academic problem indeed, but maybe a problem for quite a bunch of engineers too.)

[Kissamies (senpaidude)]

Ok. Just to let you know. The same problem is with the newest version of the openSUSE also with all the updates installed and Mathtype fonts installed as well. Interesting if it works in some Linuxes.

[Andreas (l-launchpad-0bpf-gishpuppy-com)]

Bump.

I can see Greek characters fine but large braces, arrow, and a math symbos (such as \partial) show up as black diamonds with question marks.

Adding Symbol -> OpenSymbol in the font replacement table does not fix this (perhaps the characters involved are actually from a different windows font, or those characters are missing from OpenSymbol?). Perhaps also this is a character encoding problem (don't know if utf-8 or utf-16 are used / supported by both powerpoint and OOo Impress).

I agree with the posts above, it's a total showstopper for me, since sadly collaborators / bosses / secretaries use Windows / Macs which come with MS office.

[yesint (yesint4)]

It seems that this bug is just hopeless. It will probably last for many years. Sad.

[claus (claus-erhard-wimmer)]

I'am also a big MATH-SYMBOSS!

2010/4/16 Andreas <email address hidden>:
> Bump.
>
> I can see Greek characters fine but large braces, arrow, and a math
> symbos (such as \partial) show up as black diamonds with question marks.
>
> Adding Symbol -> OpenSymbol in the font replacement table does not fix
> this (perhaps the characters involved are actually from a different
> windows font, or those characters are missing from OpenSymbol?). Perhaps
> also this is a character encoding problem (don't know if utf-8 or utf-16
> are used / supported by both powerpoint and OOo Impress).
>
> I agree with the posts above, it's a total showstopper for me, since
> sadly collaborators / bosses / secretaries use Windows / Macs which come
> with MS office.
>
> --
> [upstream] MathType formulas messed up and not converted in Open Office
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/256876
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The OpenOffice.org Suite: Confirmed
> Status in “openoffice.org” package in Ubuntu: Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> OpenOffice Writer does not show and convert MathType equations correctly. When the .doc file containing  MathType 5 formulas is opened in OO, all symbols of integrals, derivatives, sums etc. are missed or substituted by funny characters. As a result the formulas are messed up completely. The formulas are not converted to OO Math, but shown as figures (not editable) even if "convert math from/to MathType" option is selected.
>
> This bug seems to be ubuntu-specific. Original bug sent to OO team was not reproduced (http://<email address hidden>/msg396313.html). However, it was confirmed in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10alpha, but not in Mandriva Spring (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=872833).
> The bug exists even when the deb package provided on the OO.o website is used instead of the ubuntu repos version.
>
> This bug is really critical for people, who exchange documents with formulas with collaborators using MSWord+MathType.
>
> The test file can be found in original bug report (http://<email address hidden>/msg396313.html).
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/openoffice/+bug/256876/+subscribe
>

--
Claus Wimmer
Steinern Straße 44
55246 Mainz Kostheim
Handy: 01520 143 8758
Inet-Tel.: [phone]
http://www.glesir.de/~claus

[Wolfgang_Pfalzgraf (wolfgang-pfalzgraf)]

I have the same Problem.
And it's critical for us. As long as it is not solved, we can not switch our school to Oo :-(

[Wolfgang_Pfalzgraf (wolfgang-pfalzgraf)]

to add: I have Ubuntu 10.04

[Wolfgang_Pfalzgraf (wolfgang-pfalzgraf)]

And Goeffs solution did not work for me either.

[John Bruce (jbruce2112)]

I can confirm this affects me on Maverick. Geoff's solution did not work for me.

[Chris Nossing (cnossing)]

I can confirm the problem still exist on (K)ubuntu 10.04 with OpenOffice 3.2. And Goeffs solution did not work for me either.
We have implemented (K)ubuntu 10.04 with OpenOffice 3.2 for over 800 users(thankfully most of em don't use equations) in a university environment, but it is starting to become a real problem here. We do have Windows and MS Office running in Virtualbox, so we can get around the problem, but this does really dent the faith of most users(and us admins) in OO.o. And it shouldn't be that difficult to solve if it does work on different distro's. But this has been a problem for at least 5 years now, which I find kind of ridiculous!
So many people would really appreciate it if this problem is fixed soon!

[Chris Nossing (cnossing)]

To elaborate... I found post on different forums(OO forum for instance) dating back to 2005 of people having this problem.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Attachment from upstream OOo bug.

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

[This is an automated message.]
There are no new official OpenOffice.org releases in Ubuntu packaging anymore => Won't Fix

If the problem persists, please mark this bug as "also affects project Libreoffice" or "also affects distribution Libreoffice (Ubuntu)" if that has not happened already.

Please leave references to upstream OpenOffice.org bugs in place to allow cross pollination.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

yesint, this issue is unreproducible in Ubuntu 11.10, LibreOffice Writer. Does this work for you?

cd ~/Desktop && wget -c https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/256876/+attachment/2147354/+files/%D0%A1_Dependence.doc -O example.doc && lowriter --nologo example.doc

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu oneiric (development branch)
Release: 11.10

apt-cache policy libreoffice-writer
libreoffice-writer:
  Installed: 1:3.4.3-1ubuntu3
  Candidate: 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2
  Version table:
     1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main i386 Packages
 *** 1:3.4.3-1ubuntu3 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[yesint (yesint4)]

Unfortunately I have no idea if it is fixed in 11.10 and OO 3.4.x because I'm running 11.04 now. In 11.04 and OO 3.3.2 this bug still exists. It would be great if this is finally fixed!

[yesint (yesint4)]

Sorry, of course I mean LibreOffice. I wrote "OO" by mistake.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

yesint, I am closing this bug because it has been fixed in the latest development version of Ubuntu - Oneiric Ocelot.

This is a significant bug in Ubuntu. If you need a fix for the bug in previous versions of Ubuntu, please do steps 1 and 2 of the SRU Procedure [1] to bring the need to a developer's attention.

[1]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates#Procedure

[Abe (abe2016)]

open office doesn't display math equations in my word document, it leaves it as blank and sometimes has weird characters like a box with little numbers inside..not good to use..

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Abe, OpenOffice.org is no longer supported in Ubuntu. For more on this, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LibreOfficeBugWrangling . If you desire support, you would want to completely remove OOo, and install LibreOffice.