Ubuntu – Libre office font spacing (kerning) issue

Without manually messing with the fontconfig hierarchy, I think this just boils down to having the right subset of Japanese fonts installed.

For me, on a stock Ubuntu 12.04, installing the fonts-vlgothic Japanese package solved the problem. Could you try that?

• Before (no extra fonts):

  

• After installing fonts-vlgothic:

  

Unlike similar issues with Unicode fonts, this is not really a matter of fonts and glyphs (although particular fonts may not provide both variants). The problem stems from the specific history of Romanian orthography, with the end result that the comma and cedilla variants have different code points. A dictionary written for one style of spelling will always see the other style as incorrect.

Interestingly, the Hunspell ro_RO.aff file for Romanian appears to have the needed rules to work with a dictionary that provides both spellings, but the current Hunspell ro_RO.dic file provides only the comma variants.

You can, however, install a cedilla-based dictionary as an extension in LibreOffice.

The extension is available from the Apache OpenOffice site. The most recent version that I found is dict-ro.1.3-cedilla.oxt (or here - also here).

Doubleclick the downloaded file (or right-click and choose Open with LibreOffice) to install. After installing, close any open LibreOffice elements and restart Writer.

The comma-based word was pasted from Omniglot Romanian and the cedilla-based word was typed with the Romanian-WinKeys keyboard. I had LibreOffice 3.5 handy, but I don't see anything in the extension that should be a problem in 4.x.