[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 139359] Inserting a symbol does insert lots of direct formatting

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=139359

--- Comment #5 from Mike Kaganski <mikekaganski at hotmail.com> ---
The DF that I see upon inserting € symbol:

* Char Font Char Set
* Char Font Char Set Asian
* Char Font Char Set Complex
* Char Font Family
* Char Font Family Asian
* Char Font Family Complex
* Char Font Name
* Char Font Name Asian
* Char Font Name Complex
* Char Font Pitch
* Char Font Pitch Asian
* Char Font Pitch Complex

Two questions here:

1. Are all these useful here?
2. Are those that are useful should be always set?

I have no answers, but I want to mention what could affect the answers:

1. The use of properties that do not relate to the inserted symbol (like Asian
font name for Euro character) may be unnecessary, and even arbitrary: the
character dialog does not provide you a selector for fonts for Asian/Complex
scripts, so they look quite arbitrary here. When one just sets a western font
as DF (selecting the font from Font Name toolbar control), the only DF
properties set are "Char Font Char Set", "Char Font Family", "Char Font Name",
and "Char Font Pitch".
2. Font pitch looks completely unrelated. Insertion of a symbol does not seem
to involve setting pitch in any way. However, I have no idea why is it set also
when one sets just font, as mentioned above. I am not an expert in typography,
and may miss something here.
3. If the DF is needed when the new properties match the existing properties
(like when the style has the same font name) would depend on how much you
consider the *symbol* as an object or as a usual character. I imagine there
might be both use cases, when one just uses special character dialog to access
characters not available in one's keyboard layout (so inserted symbol is just a
normal character), and when one wants to have things with specific look and
feel (like "bullets"); and also when the otherwise normal characters could be 
unusual enough to require specific font, so that one might expect that whatever
the paragraph font is, the symbol's font is specific (reasoning like "I used
that font in the dialog; I want it to stick no matter what").

Personally I'd prefer to have a special entry in the dialog's font selector,
like "current font", so when I used that entry, the character would not have
any DF, and when I used an explicit font, the necessary DF would be added
regardless of current paragraph/character formatting. That would provide enough
flexibility and full control; the "current font" entry would pick what is under
the cursor, and could be the default...

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