[tlug] Strange encoding problem in FireFox

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

TLUG,

Recently, as in the last few weeks, I've noticed a strange error when 
viewing Japanese web pages. It took me a long time to be able to discern 
the pattern of how to make it happen, but now I've worked it out.

I can see any page written in Japanese just fine. But let's say there's 
a page with a form that can take in some English words in Latin 
characters. A dictionary is the most obvious example for this. When I 
submit the data, then all English on the page that is returned has 
Katakana characters intermingled with it.

It's not merely the data I've sent that gets munged up. In fact, so far 
as I can tell, the data gets sent fine. So, again using a dictionary 
example, if I look up an English word like "flag", I get back the 
Japanese æ back. But any and all English on the return page that 
accompanies the result is munged.

I've made a screen shot of what I'm talking about here:
http://www.autotelic.com/Screenshot.png

I want to stress that this doesn't just happen on Jim Breen's dictionary 
page, or on dictionaries alone. It happens on any form that takes in 
English and returns at least some Japanese. Searches within sites, or 
forms for online purchases, for example.

However, it does not happen on Google.co.jp. I'm not sure what the 
difference is.

I thought for a moment that it might be the Rikaichan plug in for 
FireFox, but I've tried some tests and so far as I can tell, that's not 
the culprit.

Can anyone recognize the pattern of encoding problem in the above 
screenshot? Any ideas what might be causing this?

--
Dave M G
Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn
Kernel 2.6.20-15-generic
Pentium D Dual Core Processor