Re: [tlug] Browser/Font Question

[Jim Breen <jimbreen@example.com>]

On 9 January 2012 18:34, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> Jim Breen writes:
>
>  > I thought I'd ask here, because there are some clued-up people on
>  > the list who will understand my question, and maybe have an answer.
>  >
>  > First, what do you see here: 直?
>
> I see a tilde. ;-)  XEmacs tells me it's a Big5 character, though. :-)

Do you do that to all UTF-8-encoded CJKs? I thought XEmacs had grown up
by now 8-)]

>  > On my Ubuntu system (via WWWJDIC) Firefox and Chrome show the
>  > Chinese version,
>
> What happens if you start them in a Japanese locale (eg,
> "LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF8 firefox")?

Apart from all FF's menus, etc. being in Japanese, no change.

>  > No fiddling with font settings changes the behaviour.
>
> What do you mean by "no fiddling with font settings"?  Font settings
> in the apps,

In the apps. FF has some settings about what you'd like as defaults.

> .....or (on Linux) fonts.conf (this might be in
> /etc/fonts/fonts.conf or elsewhere depending on distro, and can be
> changed per user in ~/.fonts.conf)?

No font names in there. Just general structural stuff.

> The default settings in /etc/fonts.conf (1) tend to prefer Chinese
> fonts, and (2) tend to alias[1] all the Han fonts to each other.  You
> might try specifying a "monospace" font on Linux; at least on my
> Gentoo system all of the Japanese monospace fonts come before the
> Chinese monospace fonts in the <prefer> stanza.
>
>  > Does anyone have a suggestion on how to make the Japanese appear
>  > more often?
>
> What do you mean by make Japanese appear more often?  On J. Random
> User's screen?  Mostly likely, you can't help this.
>
>  > Why FF can get it right in Windows and wrong in Linux?
>
> I would guess it's because the systems configure their default fonts
> differently, and implement font selection procedures differently.
>
> Footnotes:
> [1]  I forget how this actually works, probably it's just that all of
> the Han fonts say they can handle all of the Han languages.  Which is
> sorta true, but only sorta :-(

After pondering Stephen's words, I did what I should have done and
Googled around the problem. I found the page at:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11583493
"Japanese characters showing as if they were Chinese"

Deep in there is the suggestion to remove the fonts:
ttf-wqy-zenhei
ttf-wqy-microhei

I tried that (apt-get remove ...) and now I see the Japanese version
of 直, etc. It may have some side-effects, but who cares....

Thanks a lot.

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen
Adjunct Snr Research Fellow, Clayton School of IT, Monash University
Webmaster: Hawthorn Rowing Club, Treasurer: Japanese Studies Centre
Graduate student: Language Technology Group, University of Melbourne