GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 637166
Wrong symbol in tooltip
Last modified: 2011-03-02 21:34:17 UTC
Created attachment 176349 [details] Function tooltip in Windows When typing a formula the tooltip that pops up shows odd symbols instead of the nice arrows it shows in Linux (See attached images) gnumeric_tooltip.png is what shows up in Windows gnumeric_tooltip_ubuntu.png is what is supposed to show (but you already know this :) )
Created attachment 176350 [details] Function tooltip in Ubuntu I couldn't submit 2 images in the bug submission
This is just a question of the symbols available. These are unicode characters #define UNICODE_LEFT_TRIANGLE "\xe2\x97\x80" #define UNICODE_RIGHT_TRIANGLE "\xe2\x96\xb6" #define UNICODE_CROSS_AND_SKULLBONES "\xe2\x98\xa0" You may want to install the required symbols in your MS Windows installation.
Note that this was supposedly fixed . See bug #622776.
I see. We used to use arrows but then simplified them to triangles since Windows supposedly liked them better: -#define UNICODE_LEFT_ARROW "\xe2\xac\x85" -#define UNICODE_RIGHT_ARROW "\xe2\x9e\xa1" +#define UNICODE_LEFT_TRIANGLE "\xe2\x97\x80" +#define UNICODE_RIGHT_TRIANGLE "\xe2\x96\xb6" I feel like going back to the arrows if Windows has problems anyways. But really this is NOTGNOME.
Can we detect the situation?
After some investigation, I found out that it depends on the Windows Style used (same as skin for a Linux shell). This defines the font used in the tooltip, and some fonts do not have the arrows (in this case MS Sans Serif). It is not possible to install symbols in Windows. Either the font includes it or not. I think it can be dismissed as Not a Bug :) It is something that eventually can happen to a Windows user... Suggestion: why not simply use the » and « characters?
The » and « characters are quotation marks. I think xxx("x",y,z) would look rather confusing and not emphasize the input. (In the example I am using the quotation marks from my locale since I have to expect that the quotation marks suggested have the same effect in the locale where they are used.) Note that the triangles aren't included in most Linux fonts either. It is up to the graphical interface provided to retrieve the correct glyph from an available font.
If you could specify that these symbols are to be extracted from the Arial font, regardless of the font used by the Windows Style, that could work. The ► is identified as U+25BA: Black Right-Pointing Pointer and ◄ is identified as U+25C4: Black Left-Pointing Pointer
> If you could specify that these symbols are to be extracted from the Arial > font, regardless of the font used by the Windows Style, that could work. Pango (or something below it) is supposed to do just that. Obviously it isn't.
Since this seems to be a pango (or lower) bug, let's see what they have to say.
Font / glyph fallback just doesn't work the same way in Pango on Windows as on X11 / Linux, sorry. (And no, I can't say how exactly it works in a different way...) I am sure we already have a more generic bug open for that against Pango on Windows since a long time, so this should most likely be resolved as a duplicate.
Does windows 7 provide better APIs for this? *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 161027 ***