LibreOffice Special Characters

[Don]

This is a LibreOffice Writer problem. I have done a fresh install of 7.3.3.2 on my box. The program is working well (so far) except for one thing. When I try to insert special characters, none of the familiar characters appear. Whether I choose Basic Latin, Latin-1, or Nabataean (whatever that is), I get a very limited selection of characters (40), all of which the Special Characters pop-up informs me are Nabataean. Unfortunately, I am not Nabataean. I need relatively standard special characters, such as a section sign, a paragraph sign, copyright and registered trademark symbols, and stuff like that.

I have even tried uninstalling and reinstalling LibreOffice, both from the command line and through Synaptic. (I know that's a very Microsoftean of me, and I am appropriately embarrassed.)

The other thing I've noticed with the Special Characters box is that I cannot insert the hexadecimal values for the characters I want. If I backspace to delete the hex for a Nabataean character, I can erase the digits, but then an uneraseable "D" appears in the box.

Has anyone else encountered this? Any suggestions about what I should try?

Thanks.

[rab0171610]

I want to make sure you have tried the following. Please take note of the fonts that contain the symbols, as not all fonts contain special symbols.
Per the libreoffice writer website:

How do I insert the trademark symbol?


This symbol does not exist in some fonts. The symbol exists in the Symbol, Serif, and Sans-Serif fonts. To insert it:

• put the cursor where you want to add the symbol;
• select the Insert ▸ Special Character menu;
• in the dialog box that appears, choose Symbol in the font list;
• the “trademark” symbol exists in a serif font (character 212, Unicode F0D4) or in a sans-serif font (character 228, Unicode F0E4); double click on the symbol you want.

Note: for fonts that are character-rich, the TM symbol is classified in the Letterlike symbol subcategory, Unicode 2122
Alternative solution


If the chosen font allows it (this is the case for a vast majority), you only need to hold down the Alt key and enter the corresponding code of the character you want. Here are a few examples:

• ™ = Alt + 0153
• © = Alt + 0169
• ® = Alt + 0174
• ° = Alt + 0176

When a character is inserted this way in the chapter title, these symbols will be shown in the table of contents.

Note: many websites have lists of these Unicode numbers, called Alt Codes⁠.

If you have followed this advice, adhering to the font restrictions noted above and are still having issues, please post back and indicate that so we may see what we can do to advise you on troubleshooting the issue.

[jlittle]

I use Liberation Serif, it has a good selection of the characters I've wanted. You may have to install some font packages; fonts-liberation2 and fonts-roboto are a couple I have. What characters are you interested in?

To find that very special character I download UnicodeData.txt so that I can search by the name of the character. It's only a couple of MB for the whole of Unicode.

(The Nabataeans were an Arab tribe that established a kingdom in northern Arabia and what is now Jordan in biblical times.)

[jlittle]

A useful trick I use is to run UnicodeData.txt through a script that converts the code to the character:

awk -F';' '{printf "%c %s\n", strtonum("0x" $1), $0}' UnicodeData.txt > myunidata.txt

so when searching for a character I can see it if the font has it. In LibreOffice it's often easier to copy and paste from myunidata.txt once I've found it there.

[arsivci]

Everyday presents an opportunity to learn something: Nabatea was a political state of the Arab Nabataeans during classical antiquity. Being so, it has a limited special character set. Switch to a Liberation font (default for LibreOffice) from Noto Nabataean and you will find pretty much every special character.

[Don]

I have tried rab's suggestion, without success. I'm annexing two screenshots to this post. One shows the "palette" I get when I click on the special characters icon on the toolbar. The other shows a larger view of the palette. Over where it theoretically allows one to type in a hexadecimal designation, you can see the letter D. I can't get rid of that to allow me to enter a hex code. For the decimal window below that, it either shows "13" or "1," and I can't get rid of that either, so I have no way to enter an appropriate code.

The font I am using is New Century Schoolbook, which has all of the special characters I need. Linux's own version, Century Schoolbook L, also has all the characters. unfortunately, entering either in the Font window kicks the window back to the Nabataea display.

On the other hand, I just discovered quite by accident that if I just type C into the font selection box, a font called C059 loads, with all the characters I need (indeed, apparently all the same characters that either of the Century fonts has, and it appears indistinguishable from the Century fonts, at least to my increasingly old eyes. I can go with that, though it is a bit frustrating not to be able to solve the original problem.

Thanks to all for their contributions.

[chimak111]

A useful trick I use is to run UnicodeData.txt through a script that converts the code to the character:

awk -F';' '{printf "%c %s\n", strtonum("0x" $1), $0}' UnicodeData.txt > myunidata.txt

so when searching for a character I can see it if the font has it. In LibreOffice it's often easier to copy and paste from myunidata.txt once I've found it there.

I'm seeing
awk: line 2: function strtonum never defined

[claydoh]

a font called C059 loads, with all the characters I need

C059 is the New Century Schoolbook font, depending on where you look or what you downloaded.
Being that fonts are available all over the place (and the heightened chance for different quality differences) , I wonder if the specific font source may be the issue?
Is this happening with other fonts, or just this one?

I downloaded the first instance of New Century Schoolbook that appeared in a search, and it also shows up as C059 -- the font files have this in their filenames.
But I have not been able to reproduce what you are seeing on my end.

[jlittle]

function strtonum never defined

It must be a Gnu awk extension. Gnu awk, or gawk, has a few niceties I like, so I think it's worth installing. Their manual is useful if you can tolerate the preachy tone.

[Don]

My apologies to everyone who has responded. I'm not ignoring the help, nor am I ungrateful. It's just that it's exam-grading time (an awful time of the year). I'm nearly done (another couple of days); then I can get to work trying suggestions.

[chimak111]

It must be a Gnu awk extension. Gnu awk, or gawk, has a few niceties I like, so I think it's worth installing. Their manual is useful if you can tolerate the preachy tone.

Thanks, that was it. I changed your code to use gawk instead of awk. So mawk is still the default unless I specify gawk.

[Don]

Claydoh's information seems about as elegant a solution as is conceivable. I was unaware that C059 is actually NCB. The NCB files I was using were the ttf files from Windows. On previous LTS versions, they worked, but on Jammy they seem not to.

In reply to Claydoh's question about other fonts, I don't use any (except monospace fonts when required) so I don't know.

Now I have time to try jlittle's coding suggestion.

Thanks to all.

[jlittle]

... I was using were the ttf files from Windows. On previous LTS versions, they worked, but on Jammy they seem not to.

On Jammy one can install ttf-mscorefonts-installer, though it's notes say it's better to use the Liberation fonts.