Saturday, August 20, 2011

LibreOffice PPC Needs Beta Testers Like Mars Needs Women

I updated LibreOffice to 3.4.2 now that it's a final release and found a new feature that wasn't in the "What's New" docs. When using Writer, the font rendering of certain fixed-width fonts is a little... off. See if you can spot it. (UPDATE: This bug is fixed in LibreOffice 4.0.4)


Notice how lower case i's after lower case f's are scrunched together? The font above is Courier, but I also found the glitch on American Typewriter and Monaco, although not in other fixed-width fonts like Andale Mono and Courier New. Here's how the same sentence looked in 3.3 (and also in OpenOffice's current release):


That's how a monospace font is supposed to look, so something got screwed up in the update. Also, look what happens in the updated version when I open the sentence from a plain text document saved in TextEdit in Mac OS Roman format:


And then from a TextEdit file saved in .rtf format:


The special characters translate fine from a text document saved in UTF format, and also if it's saved in .doc format. The .rtf issue was not present in the older version, but I believe the Mac OS Roman issue was.

So get out there and start beta testing so they can catch these things!

(Don't look at me. Why are you looking at me like that?)
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3 comments:

  1. Ale NuAugust 24, 2011 at 9:37 AM

    Dan, do you know where to download Avidemux for PowerPC? I can´t find it. I have Tiger. I´ve downloaded a version that was supposedly to work (from the official site) but it crashes all the time on my Mac. Or maybe you know about another free video editor that actually works. Thanks!

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  2. DanAugust 24, 2011 at 12:26 PM

    The version I have can be found by going to their site and on the downloads page clicking on older releases, then choosing the 2.4.4 Gtk_Quartz version. Direct link here:

    http://prdownload.berlios.de/avidemux/avidemux_2.4.4_Gtk_Quartz_universal.dmg

    There's also the "QT4" version, which is supposedly more Mac-like in appearance, but I haven't used it.

    If this doesn't work for you, another editor is MPEG Streamclip:

    http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ale NuAugust 25, 2011 at 9:32 AM

    Thanks! It works. I´ve also downloaded the QT4 version and it´s true: much more Mac-like. Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete