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graphicore / librebarcode

Libre Barcode: barcode fonts for various barcode standards.
https://graphicore.github.io/librebarcode
SIL Open Font License 1.1
429 stars 25 forks source link

Libre Barcode 128 Text in Excel #45

Open honetjak opened 3 years ago

honetjak commented 3 years ago

barcode_128 When using Libre Barcode 128 Text in desktop Excel 365, there is a checksum char in the text below (Hello World!W). In web based Excel is it as expectet without checksum char (Hello World!).

graphicore commented 3 years ago

It looks like the OpenType feature calt is turned off. I.e. when applying in CSS font-feature-settings: "calt" 0;.

NOTE that also the space between "Hello" and "World" doesn't show, to create an at least working barcode use  LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX instead of space. See here: https://github.com/graphicore/librebarcode/issues/34

Since Microsoft owns the OpenType spec we can look at their own site at the Tag: 'calt':

UI suggestion: This feature should be active by default.

We conclude that ~web based~ Excel doesn't follow the recommendation of its creator. Likely, this is to mimic the behavior of other MS Office tools, for Word the fix is shown here: https://github.com/graphicore/librebarcode/issues/28#issuecomment-745736391 But I don't know if Excel or web-based Excel allow turning on the "Use Contextual Alternatives" option.

I'd appreciate your feedback whether or not you can find the setting for "Use Contextual Alternatives" in your software.

graphicore commented 3 years ago

I just see that web based Excel is doing the right thing and desktop Excel is not. Well, the answer above is still valid, despite of the switcheroo: find the "Use Contextual Alternatives" option, or use  and live with the checksum character shown.

Also: complain at Microsoft Office Team for neglecting the OpenType standard.