Version: 1.2.1 (using KDE 3.1.1) Installed from: SuSE Compiler: gcc version 3.3 20030226 (prerelease) (SuSE Linux) OS: Linux (i686) release 2.4.20-4GB When importing a 1.2 spreadsheet into kspread 1.2.1, the fonts are bigger than before and no longer fit into the cell space. The default font seems to be Nimbus 10 point, the document used 12 point. Reducing it to 10 point makes it fit mostly, but then printing is too small. Adjusting row and column size works on screen, but for printing there is a disproprtionate amount of space arounf text, especially vertically. There isn't a useful feature in kspread which allows to have text both in a readable size on screen and in a readable size on paper. Previously I had to create a document for A3 and modify the postscript into scaling to A4. This no longer works, the cell size is about right but the text is too small due to too large spaces between text and cell borders. The view scale function may be a good idea but makes things completely unreadable (for both enlargement and reduction). When I select a 10 point postscript palatino in LaTeX I know how big it prints. When I select a 10 point postscript palatino in kspread, I would expect it to be readable in the kspread window, and to print out at exactly the same size as it would in LaTeX, and for kspread to allocate the correct amount of space to an A4 page and to show the red page border lines accordingly. This doesn't happen in kspread, the paper area associated with the amount of window space is hugely too small, when printed corresponding to a printing which is far too big. As a side effect, one can also fit bugger all on a piece of paper. This is close to a k.o. scenario for usability, the remaining functions of kspread may be as good as they are, the inability to print things out make it unusable. The inability to load its own documents from previous versions also seriously limit its usability on a continued basis.
In short this bug is most propabely fixed in CVS for KSpread 1.3. A bit longer: I assume you switched with the KSpread version the screenresolution as well from maybe 72dpi or 75dpi to 100dpi. With this switch the screen fonts are too big (with a factor of 100 / 72), which would explain, why your 1.2 version file has bigger fonts in 1.2.1. On printout the size of the fonts matches correctly the font size. Beside of this bugfix KSpread 1.3 will have also much better WYSIWYG compliance, also it is still not 100% (but I say 98% is already fine - it's a rounding issue not easy to solve). At least EXCEL doesn't have real WYSIWYG as well, so we are not that much worser than EXCEL. And an even better WYSIWYG representation is already planned for the future version of KSpread. OTOH 100% WYSWIG like Latex is not the most important functionality of a spreadsheet application. It would be good to have, but doesn't disturb too much if it is not working 100% correctly. All the calculations must be 100% correct and it must be easy to use. Can you please confirm that you switched the screenresolution as well? Philipp
Subject: Re: font sizes too big when importing 1.2 spreadsheet > I assume you switched with the KSpread version the screenresolution as well > from maybe 72dpi or 75dpi to 100dpi. With this switch the screen fonts are too > big (with a factor of 100 / 72), which would explain, why your 1.2 version file > has bigger fonts in 1.2.1. On printout the size of the fonts matches correctly > the font size. Nice theory, but doesn't appear to be true. :( Before (SuSE 8.1): xf86-4.2.0-176 xfnt100-4.2.0-176 xfntscl-4.2.0-176 Now (SuSE 8.2): XFree86-server-4.3.0-15 XFree86-fonts-100dpi-4.3.0-15 XFree86-fonts-75dpi-4.3.0-15 XFree86-fonts-scalable-4.3.0-15 XFree86-4.3.0-15 So yes I seem to have installed the 75 dpi fonts now, but not previously. The printout is as stuffed as the screen display. Much less fits onto a page now. > Beside of this bugfix KSpread 1.3 will have also much better WYSIWYG > compliance, also it is still not 100% (but I say 98% is already fine - it's a > rounding issue not easy to solve). > At least EXCEL doesn't have real WYSIWYG as well, so we are not that much > worser than EXCEL. And an even better WYSIWYG representation is already planned > for the future version of KSpread. I don't care about wysiwyg, but I really care about 2 things: 1) *I*, not some program, decide how much fits onto a page 2) After every minor version upgrade, at least old documents can be loaded without having to be essentially retyped. Major headaches from SuSE 8.0 -> 8.1 and 8.1 -> 8.2 with kspread. Excel delivers both those features. kspread doesn't. I can not run a business on this kind of thing, nor can I seriously suggest to a Microsoftie that (s)he does. kspread very urgently needs a page scale function, MS office had these since version 0. > OTOH 100% WYSWIG like Latex is not the most important functionality of a > spreadsheet application. It would be good to have, but doesn't disturb too much > if it is not working 100% correctly. Agreed. > All the calculations must be 100% correct > and it must be easy to use. Sorry, I disagree. If the results can't be printed and shown to the boss, both those features become irrelevant and the software a waste of disk space ;) Correctness of calculation is an absolute necessity, but by no means sufficient. Unless e.g. cells which reference a value on another sheet in the same document are updated correctly (when changing rows/columns on the other sheet), even correctness can be questioned for anything exceeding 1 sheet. kspread has a usability problem (unfortunately!). > Can you please confirm that you switched the screenresolution as well? No, sorry. I am still using a display size of 1280x1024. In addition I installed 75dpi fonts - should this matter? The current system was a clean install on a blank disk. I did notice that kde in general went wanky with fonts though. Everything looks a little bigger (actually a good thing), but the royal nuisance is that all fonts now default to "sans", and that can be many different things. When installing the MS truetype web fonts, absolutely everything gets polluted with Verdana - damn it! They're fonts for displaying web pages and I don't wnat them pooped all over my desktop. If I did I'd select them! Actually, that's a thought - kspread shows verdana 12pt (sometimes only). If I select everything (how do you do that?) and force it back to what it was before, Numbus Sans I 10pt, it mostly looks ok. Why does the font suddenly change? Where can the document default font be configured?? I uninstalled the MS fonts, restarted kspread, it uses 12pt Nimbus Sans I when 10pt would have been closer to the previous state. I uninstalled the 75dpi fonts and restarted kspread, no difference at all. I don't believe the 98% wysiwyg - The position of the text of each cell on the printout looks ok, but the fonts are much too small (compared with Nimbus 10 pt on screen), the width the cell text takes up is about 4/5 of what it is on screen - i.e. a full cell is only 4/5 full on paper. The appearance of too large vertical interline spacing also suggests the fonts are printed smaller than shown (although they are printed in the correct place). Restarting kde after deleting the 75dpi fonts changes nothing. HTH, Volker
Subject: Re: font sizes too big when importing 1.2 spreadsheet > Can you please confirm that you switched the screenresolution as well? Correction: previously the xf86-4.2.0 package contained the 75dpi fonts. That means nothing has changed - before and now both 75dpi and 100dpi fonts were installed. Or else what do you mean by "screen resolution"? No change in 1280x1024. There was an upgrade from XFree86 4.2 to 4.3 though, but this shouldn't seriously affect applications?? Volker
> Nice theory, but doesn't appear to be true. :( Not sure, I think you still mix a bit the dpi problem. > Before (SuSE 8.1): > xf86-4.2.0-176 > xfnt100-4.2.0-176 > xfntscl-4.2.0-176 > Now (SuSE 8.2): > XFree86-server-4.3.0-15 > XFree86-fonts-100dpi-4.3.0-15 > XFree86-fonts-75dpi-4.3.0-15 > XFree86-fonts-scalable-4.3.0-15 > XFree86-4.3.0-15 > So yes I seem to have installed the 75 dpi fonts now, but not > previously. The printout is as stuffed as the screen display. Much less > fits onto a page now. Installed fonts doesn
Subject: Re: font sizes too big when importing 1.2 spreadsheet Hallo Philipp, > You can see your current settings with xdpyinfo (search for resolution) Ah, right - now I see what you're talking about: dimensions: 1280x1024 pixels (322x241 millimeters) resolution: 101x108 dots per inch There is a DisplaySize 320 240 in XF86Config now which wasn't there before, is that causing the trouble? Why switch to 100dpi anyway? Doesn't give me a single pixel more on the screen... If there isn't a good reason for running 100dpi all of a sudden and if it fixes several apps, why does anyone bother? I can appreciate the problems of firguring out how much space a piece of text will take up on screen and on paper... > > by no means sufficient. Unless e.g. cells which reference a value on > > another sheet in the same document are updated correctly (when changing > > rows/columns on the other sheet), even correctness can be questioned > > for anything exceeding 1 sheet. kspread has a usability problem > > (unfortunately!). > > Ehm, you mean if you delete a row in one sheet and on another sheet there is a > formula with a reference to a cell in the first sheet which should be updated > and it isn
Halo Volker, So did you finally manage to get the corrent font size ? Please let us know if there are still some issues with regard to that. Ariya
Subject: Re: font sizes too big when importing 1.2 spreadsheet > So did you finally manage to get the corrent font size ? Please let us know if > there are still some issues with regard to that. The easiest in the end was to force the X server to run at 75x75 dpi, this makes kspread behave as before, and I still have to set the page size in kpread to A3 and afterwards mangle the postscript to scale down to A4 to get any useful output at all. It's important that the page outline (the red lines) is displayed correctly, taking into acount a possible page scale factor as well. I am not sure whether that's the case, the test is a comparison with LaTeX. The same text, same font, same size should produce identical width on paper. Fonts which are neither TT nor Type1 are displayed correctly on screen, but not printed (some substitution occurs). If the MS web fonts are installed KDE isn't able to print anything usefully. As far as I can test, it's impossible to use the printer-resident 35 base postscript fonts, which is probably true for KDE altogether rather than just kspread. Printing in KDE is seriously damaged atm.
Hello Volker, as I understood, we can close the bug, as it is either not a KSpread problem (usage of fixed fonts, substution) or already fixed in cvs (effects of dpi settings, scale factor, deletion and update of other sheets, page outlines). So I'm closing this bug now. Thx for the report, Philipp PS: Just one word on fixed fonts: If you intend to have good printout, you should always use either Type1 or much better TT fonts. You can have also a look into a comparable thread on the koffice mailinglist: http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice&m=105186206210392&w=2 and on the koffice-devel mailinglist (descirbing the qt bug): http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=105157831032065&w=2
Subject: Re: font sizes too big when importing 1.2 spreadsheet > Just one word on fixed fonts: If you intend to have good printout, you should always use either > Type1 or much better TT fonts. Actually, if I intend to have good printout I would have to use anything but KDE 3.1.1. Printing in KDE is broken beyond description. I understand that I might get slightly ragged edges from fixed fonts, this would depend on print size. The point was that if kspread allows to use them in a spread sheet, one would expect to be able to print them, which isn't happening. That's a bug. Quality is a separate issue. "Should use type1" would be nice, but it's not happening either. I just rebooted and tried again, I have a document here which prints (as set) in luxi serif (a type1 font), only if the text in all column fits, if it doesn't (i.e. I select 13 instead of 12 point), it gets printed in verdana. Yes I had deleted all the fonts with names larger than 1024 bytes in ../truetype/fonts.cache-1 out of the ../truetype directory. ".. much better TT fonts" sorry are you kidding? Font quality has little to do with type1 or TT, if anything type1 is better as it's easier to do right I understand. I have a large number of purchased type1 fonts installed, which xlsfonts shows but kspread/KDE doen't even show and is therefore unable to access. Why? As I keep having font trouble, I examined the other fonts.cache-1 files and found 26 or so too large (up to >8k) names in ../misc. These fonts have been shipped with X11 for decades and I am not going to start deleting in there. Maybe this is why the luxi serif doesn't work. Volker