[tlug] Japanese support on CentOS

[Johan Berntsson <johan@example.com>]

I'm having trouble with Japanese texts on an application running on
CentOS 5.5. The same application runs without trouble in Ubuntu 10.04

The application is written in Java/Swing, and uses configuration files
to build the GUI, including menu bars and toolbars.  It's using MS
Gothic which I have installed using these instructions:
http://furuiman.blogspot.com/2009/01/preety-japanese-fonts-in-fedora.html.
I know that MS Gothic is a bad choice on a Linux platform, but this
cannot be changed (legacy application).

The configuration files contains Japanese translations of
File/Exit/Help and the like. This looks fine when I open the file in
an editor, but when I start the application I only get random
characters instead of the Japanese texts on menues and toolbar
buttons.

I have discovered that by setting LC_ALL to ja_JP.UTF-8 the text is
displayed. But, the application complains that it can no longer open
"MS Gothic" and the font is wrong. So what I need is to configure the
system to allow me to keep using MS Gothic while still being able to
see the text (using UTF-8). Any RHEL/CentOS/Fedora people here who can
help me out?

Thanks,
Johan