Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 5991
Overline for text in word processor
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:43:11 UTC
In technical writing, words like RESET or ENABLE are overlined at times. Most word processing programs are not capable of this: FrameMaker, Interleaf and some other expensive publishing programs are the exceptions. Could this feature be added to the character formats, under FONT effects, for the word processsing and drawing components? I checked the help files and it's not an option now. It is in the Math component, but inserting a formula in the dozens of places in a chip datasheet where RESET has to be overlined, and making it all line up neatly, isn't easy.
I could imagine an underline/strikethrough "above the text" or an emphasis mark "bar". General comment: OO.org Writer is for word processing and so far will not try to compete with "expencive publishing programs". There will always be software that can do "magic" compared to a word processing software (I.e. CAD software...). Reassigned to Christian.
Reassiged to Bettina.
Note that in Chinese the straight "underline" is not text decoration or font effect; it is a full-fledged punctuation mark. This could be translated as the "proper name mark" and is roughly equivalent to capitalization in English, but only used for proper names. It is seldom used nowadays, but is still being taught and in a certain extent used. In right-to-left (vertical) mode, in some countries, the usual convention is to place the proper name mark on the *right* of the proper name. In OOo, this corresponds to an "overline". Thus, one can argue that overline is needed to support Chinese more fully. This might be taken into consideration when evaluating whether to support "overlining".
(Correction: "in some countries" in my previous comment should read "when following certain older conventions". I still stand by my reasoning; IMHO allowing the proper name mark and citation mark ("wavy underline") to be placed on either side of a piece of text is similar to allowing ruby to be placed on either side.)
I strongly support your proposal. I need that feature all the time for electronics related texts. It would also be a good argument for my colleagues who still use WinWord to change to OO. As a rather ugly alternative to the overline, one can put a slash in front of the word (e.g. /ENABLE, /RESET, /RD, /WR), but other than WinWord, OO doesn't keep the slash and the word together at the end of line, i.e. the / remains at the end of the previous line, while the word moves to the next line. That is probably a philosophical issue, but I would pretty much like the slash to remain at the beginning of the word.
To add to the scope of the utility of adding this feature: I've just started my MA degree in sign language linguistics. With a reputation as somewhat of a computer geek, I was asked to set up one computer in our lab with Linux (the others are Windows or MacOS). We're using it as a sort of proof-of-concept machine, to evaluate if Linux provides us with any benefits. Unfortunately, one absolutely critical there-is-no-other-convention-for-doing-this ability we have to have in even the most basic sign language transcriptions is overline text. AbiWord does support this feature, so we're probably going to end up using that for the time being, though OOO is overall such an attractive product it was definitely our first choice. The disappointing part is that we just can't use OO in the lab until this feature is added. In defense of adding this feature, I don't think we're talking about a fancy, difficult-to-implement desktop publishing-like situation here. I don't know much of software engineering, and I've not had any programming classes (thought I start this month!), so I can't speak with authority as to the difficulty of getting this set up. I understand why it's not been high on the priority list, but it pains me to realize something as simple as this is preventing another group from adopting this software. To the developers, that should be nothing less than flattering! Can't we at least nick the code in AbiWord that does this? :) In any event, I wanted to a) offer my services however they may be useful; I dig this project and want to support it however I can, and b) give an example of another (admittedly teeny-tiny portion of the population) group that would find this feature absolutely necessary for adoption of OO.
It's an issue with mathematical texts as well. It is no way a feature for luxury publishing products, but it is a basic need-it-to-get-my-work-done-feature. Substition by embeded formulas is often less comfortable.
It's also an issue with writing periodic decimals in main text as stated in Bug 23764 for the formula editor.
This isn't a "magic" feature, it's a standard text-font convention for a number of common documentation types: logic, finite mathematics, electronic specifications, etc. An example: JEDEC's Software Tools Committee would adopt OO.o as our standard document format for editable specifications in a heartbeat if we could just flag active-low signals properly. That's a lot of seats at IBM, Intel, AMD, TI, Philips, ....
*** Issue 17031 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Can I just add that in high energy physics, where the overline denotes antiparticle, this is probably the biggest single difficulty with 'alternative' software, and would give a real advantage to OpenOffice
You can use a combing overline (unicode character U+0305) (or U+0304 combining macron) provided that you have a font installed that provides this character - like Doulos SIL, Gentium, Arial Unicode, Lucida Sans Unicode,... Maybe IssueZilla can handle these: m̄acron (there should be the macron above the "m") and o̅verline (line above the "o") now the real words (may result in garbage): R̅E̅S̅E̅T̅ and E̅N̅A̅B̅L̅E̅ You can create an autotext for easy insertion. (you can use autoTexts to insert the formatted formula as well) Yet another workaround is to draw a line and put it above the words (set anchor to character, posistion relative to character). Again use an autoText. This way you don't have to do the changes over and over again. All these methods are meant as workarounds. If only a fixed set of expressions is concerned, they work very good. If the overline is to be put above different characters, only the first method (combined overline) is useful (but may not work because a capable font is needed). keywords & reassigning according to new RFE-process.
*** Issue 40452 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
One workaround that JEDEC has used is to create font sets with overbar. Still ugly, but a font selection is probably better than drawing or whatever. I think I'll have my CS-student son look into doing this one as a summer project, though ...
*** Issue 47809 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Discovered by chance that Unicode fonts can do this simply by combining a standard character with a 'Combining Diacritical Mark' and choosing the overline. Some fonts, like Lucida Sans Unicode don't work too well (the overline has spaces in it). IPA fonts seem to be better, for example Gentium is an excellent font and a free download. It's a slow process, but a possible workaround? [added cc]
I've been following a thread on this issue on the users maillist. Many people have suggested many possible workarounds, but in my mind they *all* ought to be considered *workarounds*, not solutions. So I'm adding my votes for this enhancement: An Overline font effect that spans (that is, does not skip) spaces and punctuation in a selected string.
Another 2 votes for this issue. As another EE, I find the lack of this feature frustrating. I've tried the unicode macron approach and it doesn't look good. The 'insert formula' approach looked promising after changin the formula font, but it's not suitable for me. Formulae are inserted as objects, and as I autogenerate a lot of documents, this overcomplicates things for my scripts. I'm willing to take this issue on, if I get some guidance. As I see it, and I admit to not having hacked on OpenOffice before, the following would need to be done: * Add overlining capabilities to the text renderer. The chances are that this already exists somewhere as formulae can be overlined. (Do formualae and ordinary text use the same code? If not, maybe I can borrow from the formula renderer. Or maybe copy and modify the underlining code.) * Update the OpenOffice document XML spec to accept 'overline' as a valid text-decoration. Make sure overlined text can be loaded and saved. * Update the GUI to allow overlining. * Update documentation/help text. As I've said - if anyone can point me in the right direction, I'm willing to give this a shot.
I added 2 votes. Overlines were also extensively used to express abbreviations in most (if not all) Western European languages before the modern era. In many disciplines (e.g., philology) reporting these abbreviations as they appear in the original source (i.e., with overlines) is necessary. While using unicode overbars is a workaround, it requires to set a different character size for the letter to be overlined and the overbar itself (if they're the same size, the overbar "disappears" in the body of most capital letters), which causes problems when changing the size (or style) of sections of text. Also, an overbar needs to be added for every single character to be overlined, which may be very annoying if extensive overlining is needed.
In order to get an overline feature it must be available in the file format also. AFAICT overlining is not yet part of the OpenDocument specification. Thus, I recommend you also suggest it to the OpenDocument Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office. Write a mail to office-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
OpenDocument supports overline (inherited from SVG) This is the schema (v1.0) http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/12571/OpenDocument-schema-v1.0-os.rng search for "overline", it's just after underline and strikethrough.
I too would like to see this feature implemented, and am prepared to do the work. There needs to be some agreement on how it should be done. I can think of three options: 1) Change "Format->Character->Font Effects->Underlining" to "Underlining/Overlining" and add extra choices in the drop-down list for various overline styles. Note that this would not allow text to be both overlined and underlined. 2) Add an extra choice, "Line" to the drop-down list "Format->Character->Font Effects->Emphasis mark". Note that this drop-down list is currently only visible if support for Asian languages has been enabled, also it would appear that emphasis marks are not placed over white space (although they are placed over punctuation). 3) Add a new drop-down list, "Format->Character->Font Effects->Overlining" with the same options as for underlining. This gives the most flexibility. Option 1 is the easiest to implement (I've already done it!) and requires minimal changes to the code base. The code for rendering the overlines is already present (although a bit buggy). Option 2 is probably almost as easy to implement and again would not require major changes to the code base. Option 3 is fairly straightfoward - you just need to duplicate all the underlining control - but does mean extensive changes to the code base. Personally I think option 3 is the one to go for - the others are not really intuitive to the user. Some other issues: 1) The current overlining code tends to draw outside the character box when rendering on screen. This results in a single pixel height line being left behind when overlined text is moved or deleted. This would need to be fixed. 2) I don't know whether or not the ODF SVG overline attributes can be used for this purpose. They seem to relate to a font face, not a text style.
I'd vote for option 3 - it's the most flexible of all and might even offer stuff like double-overline. And thanks a lot for doing the work!
It's been almost 6 years since I requested this feature, a font characteristic that is used in several fields from linguistics to engineering. None of the work-arounds really work.
Yes, it is a shame. This would be very useful.
Well, I did do much of the work to implement this feature. I had it working in Writer and mostly working in Impress. Two things blocked further progress: 1) We need a way to save the overline attribute in ODF files. I submitted a proposal to the office-comment@lists.oasis-open.org mailing list last May, which engendered some discussion but got no further. I've just posted a reminder to the list, but it might help if other voices were heard... 2) We need a formal specification for the changes to OOo. I just haven't had time to write one. Unlike patching code, which I can do in odd hours here and there, writing a good specification requires a period of concentrated effort. If anyone wants to volunteer to do this task, that might speed things along. I suggest reading http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Specification before stepping forward, though.
SBA: A quote from http://www.openoffice.org/scdocs/ddIssues_EnterModify.html#issuetype <QUOTE> Enhancement is an improvement to an existing feature. Feature is an addition to the software to add a piece of functionality that does not yet exist. </QUOTE> This will also require adjustments in the UI. => Changed issue type to "Feature".
Set Target to OOo 3.1. Reassigned to Martinwhitaker. He already started working on this.
Set to "Started" ( Martin asked so because he has not the rights to set issue targets and states yet).
A draft specification is available, see: http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/formatting/Overlined_Text.odt The prototype implementation is done. The sticking point remains getting support for this feature in ODF.
@thb: the mtfrenderer probably needs to be extended for this too...
OOps, I just saw that the mtfrenderer is already taken care of. Thank you martinwhitaker. Anyway, adding thb and me to CC was a good idea.
Update - the OASIS ODF TC has approved the proposal to support this feature. The necessary support will be included in ODF 1.2.
Martin, this is great! So what do we need to do to get that into 3.1 and how can I help you?
Finally! :-D
Mathias, thanks for offering to help. As far as I am concerned, the work is basically done, and just needs to get pushed through the approval process. My patches are in the CWS 'overline3' and Frank M. has promised to review them. I expect we will need to create a fresh CWS to get back in sync with the development head - past experience suggests that automatically resyncing the CWS will result in a big mess (that is why we are already at 'overline3' :-( ). But I would rather not go through that again until we are close to integration. Also, there is some renaming I would like to do, to reflect the fact that the FontUnderline enumeration is now used for both underline and overline attributes. There is an open issue in the specification relating to this. I would like to hear other opinions on this, as it affects both the UNO API and the internal code. Again though, I would prefer not to do this work until we are close to integration, as it will change lots of lines of code - making resyncing even more painful.
@fl: Could you please take care of the specification upload and feature mail? After this, please assign this issue to sba, thank you.
*** Issue 28247 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
The specification can be found here: http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/formatting/Overlined_Text.odt
Ready for QA.
.
Verified in CWS overline3. Test case specification here: http://qa.openoffice.org/ooQAReloaded/TestcaseSpecifications/OpenOffice.org_3.1/Word_Processor/Overlined_Text.html This is implemented in optional AutoTest "w_formatcharacter.bas"
Verified in DEV300_m40, .deb version - closing - Sophie