Hebrew Menus texts unreadable - characters show up as square blocks
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
libreoffice (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
I have my system locale set to Hebrew. Most applications seem to work fine, but recently I have noticed that LibreOffice has become unusable because the menu texts all show up as square blocks. Other applications display Hebrew in their menus fine so it is somethin specific to LibreOffice.
WORKAROUND: Set the Locale to English (or another language that the Ubuntu font displays correctly), from within LibreOffice go to Tools -> Options, View and untick 'Use System Font'. Then set the locale back to Hebrew and all displays correctly, albeit in a different font.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: libreoffice 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSign
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-14-generic i686
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: i386
CheckboxSubmission: ad9a15703e19217
CheckboxSystem: abc83e3988b72e7
Date: Sat Dec 24 21:32:57 2011
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-25 (60 days ago)
description: | updated |
tags: | removed: blocks hebrew menu square unreadable |
Changed in libreoffice (Ubuntu): | |
status: | New → Incomplete |
After some searching around I found this discussion at http:// sfdev.tapuz. co.il/shirshur- 236-156463935. htm which explains that the problem is to do with the fonts. It seems that the default Ubuntu font (i.e. the one named Ubuntu) does not support Hebrew properly, so instead it displays squares. (Try typing Hebrew in a word processor and changing the font to Ubuntu - the characters are displayed as squares).
A workaround is to set the Locale to English (or another language that the Ubuntu font displays correctly), from within LibreOffice go to Tools -> Options, View and untick 'Use System Font'. Then set the locale back to Hebrew and all displays correctly, albeit in a different font.
So either the Ubuntu font needs to be expanded to include the characters for Hebrew, or there needs to be some sort of fall-back font that LibreOffice menus can use when the characters for the current language are not supported by the default font.