Issue 67420 - Calc should understand unicode mathematical operators
Summary: Calc should understand unicode mathematical operators
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: Calc
Classification: Application
Component: editing (show other issues)
Version: OOo 2.0.3
Hardware: All All
: P3 Trivial with 3 votes (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: AOO issues mailing list
QA Contact:
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Keywords:
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Blocks:
 
Reported: 2006-07-15 21:59 UTC by nmailhot
Modified: 2013-08-07 15:12 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---

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Description nmailhot 2006-07-15 21:59:47 UTC 
calc should understand unicode mathematical operators in addition to traditional
ASCII approximations :
- U+2212 MINUS SIGN −
- U+00D7 MULTIPLICATION SIGN ×
- U+2215 DIVISION SLASH ∕
- U+00F7 DIVISION SIGN ÷
...

Now the locale on most FLOSS systems is unicode-based only app limitations block
the redefinition on the numeric keypad with actual math symbols

gnumeric already supports minus

As screen technology improves users have started noticing the differences in
rendering between minus and hyphen (unicode.org asks for the glyph to be drawn
with different sizes: - vs − wich means a mixed plus/hyphen list looks bad 
+-+-+-+-+ instead of +−+−+−+−+−+−+−+ with a real minus
Comment 1 simos.bugzilla 2006-07-15 22:25:02 UTC 
I believe the idea is to have Calc understand and consider equivalent the
traditional operators and their new Unicode counterparts.

Why this is useful?
1. There are new keyboard maps that cover more parts of the Unicode standard.
2. A user may paste a table from a Web page that uses the more elegant new
Unicode characters.

I suppose at this stage Calc should show the traditional operators, is that correct?
Comment 2 nmailhot 2006-07-15 22:27:10 UTC 
IMHO the simplest thing would be for calc to understand both
and dispaly whatever operator the user typed

I think gnumeric displays hyphen in place of minux in addition to understanding
minus and hyphen
Comment 3 moyogo 2006-07-15 22:30:04 UTC 
Gnumeric actually transforms Unicode minus to legacy hyphen-minus.
So the hyphen-minus is saved and when displayed, it is Unicode minus.
Comment 4 frank 2006-07-15 23:34:39 UTC 
Not a defect but an enhancement request. So reflagged and re-assigned to
requirements.
Comment 5 nmailhot 2006-09-21 08:35:41 UTC 
As evidenced there :
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8240

Xorg/XFree86 keyboard maps are being converter to unicode versions
Assuming the keyboard outputs american ascii symbols is therefore dangerous

The safest course for the OO.o UI would be to learn all the different unicode
variants of any given symbol it takes as input