Japanise Character Fonts

ArchUser01Ger · Today 10:30:42

Hello,

I have trouble with the display of Japanese characters. I do have fonts for them, but my system seems to prefer some other language for displaying these characters (I don't know which language, it is not simplified Chinese). Some websites display characters as Japanese but some display them differently. I tried following the steps on the arch wiki site Localization/Japanese and edited my /etc/locale.gen as described. I also changed the font fallback order on about:config for firefox to have Japanese at top. Does someone have an idea what else I can do, to ensure that han characters are displayed in their Japanese form? I uses hyprland by the way, if this is relevant.

Thank you very much!

Nikolai5 · Today 16:41:20

Can you confirm what you actually want to achieve?

Locales and fonts you see when browsing Japanese websites or when Japanese text is used somewhere are different things.
Locales control system language and regional formatting (for example: UI language, date formats, number formatting like 10,000.00 vs 10.000,00, sorting rules, etc.). This is what you would change if you wanted your desktop environment and system messages to be in Japanese.

If you just want to be able to use and read Japanese, you primarily just need the font packages installed that can display those characters and then its a case of whether the applications you use like browsers are picking those up correctly.
What font packages do you have, what issues exactly are you getting?

「これは日本語ですか？」Do you see the hiragana and kanji correctly?

Last edited by Nikolai5 (Today 16:42:21)

ArchUser01Ger · Today 17:07:38

Hi, thanks for your answer, I am sorry if I have not been clear.

I do have Japanese Fonts and I can read what you wrote just fine. But if I type for example 平 on this website, it is displayed to me like 異体字 form you can see here: http://blog.livedoor.jp/atori_kotoba/ar … 33766.html. This is also what I see when I type 平 in my console (I use Alacritty). My goal would be to archive, that my system displays characters like this consistently in its Japanese form, be it on websites or on applications I use. Is there any way to archive this? (If I use Youtube or Wikipedia 平 looks right for me, so I must have the right font for it. But on some websites like for example this forum the character displays differently for me) .

EDIT: After investigating a bit further, I am pretty sure that the unicode poits are displayed in their Korean forms as standard for me. I have no idea why.

Last edited by ArchUser01Ger (Today 17:53:30)

seth · Today 18:03:47

平 is 5e73
異 is 7570
体 is 4f53
字 is 5b57

And I assume you see them all as different glyphs so they're basically *displayed* correctly?

if I type for example 平 on this website

Assuming this is an input related problem, what https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Input_method do you use and how is it configured?

Nikolai5 · Today 18:36:14

ArchUser01Ger wrote:

Hi, thanks for your answer, I am sorry if I have not been clear.
EDIT: After investigating a bit further, I am pretty sure that the unicode poits are displayed in their Korean forms as standard for me. I have no idea why.

Yes, I've found actually its the same for me after comparing the character you reference to jisho.org

I am currently trying to adjust the fontconfig configuration files to pick up "Noto Sans CJK JP" instead. I'll let you know if I have any success with getting that to display 平 normally.

fc-match -s :lang=ja | head

I assume that returns a KR font as the first option for you?

seth · Today 18:50:14

@Nikolai5 is this a recent regression introduced by /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.default/48-guessfamily.conf ?

Nikolai5 · Today 19:05:15

I'm not sure, looking at that file, I don't see it as an issue, its quite simple/limited in what its doing.

It seems like some fall-back shenanigans beyond my knowledge, I've been playing around with a config file and with this:

 <match target="pattern">
  <test compare="contains" name="lang" qual="any">
   <string>ja</string>
  </test>
  <edit binding="strong" mode="prepend" name="family">
   <string>Noto Sans CJK JP</string>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>

I was able to get the output:

-> fc-match -s :lang=ja | head
NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc: "Noto Sans CJK JP" "Regular"

But it didn't actually "correct" the font within kwrite, or Firefox. I suspect if the language isn't being passed through by the application it is falling back to Korean due to some internal font ordering.
For example if I go to jisho.org and look at that character, it displays correctly on the page, but the tab title is different (Korean style). Likely because the web page was set up with specific web font rules in CSS, etc, but Firefox application itself has not picked that up from my system.

This is a can of worms of an issue I didn't even previously notice, any further developments or I learn anything else I'll let you guys know.

seth · Today 19:07:39

I don't see it as an issue, its quite simple/limited in what its doing.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=313799 - there're several threads, it mostly botches resolution of generic families but the entire resolution stack changes.
Hence the primary question whether this is a regression.

ArchUser01Ger · Today 19:15:30

seth wrote:

平 is 5e73
異 is 7570
体 is 4f53
字 is 5b57
And I assume you see them all as different glyphs so they're basically *displayed* correctly?
if I type for example 平 on this website
Assuming this is an input related problem, what https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Input_method do you use and how is it configured?

If it helps: the glyph 平 is 5e73 looks for me like + U+E0101 or + U+E0103 on this site: https://www.chise.org/est/view/character/%E5%B9%B3 . I want it to look like + U+E0100 or + U+E0102 (I can't see a difference there). I don't think it is an input related issue, my input method is setup according to the wiki and works fine on most Japanese websites.

Thanks for all the effort by the way!

seth · Today 20:30:04

link is 403 - this character??
All U+E010x are non-printable codepoints, it might help to link some screenshots, but have you tested Nokolai5's fontconfiglet?

ArchUser01Ger · Today 21:16:48

Does this link work? https://imgur.com/a/z9d4GOC . The very first 平 in the word 平氏 on the top of the screenshot is displayed correctly (there where normaly the adressbar would be). All the other 平 that follow in the site itself are a (probably?) Korean version. My Output for:
fc-match -s :lang=ja | head
is:
NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc: "Noto Sans CJK JP" "Regular"
FreeSans.otf: "FreeSans" "Regular"
FreeSansBold.otf: "FreeSans" "Bold"
CaskaydiaCoveNerdFont-Regular.ttf: "CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font" "Regular"
ProggyCleanCENerdFont-Regular.ttf: "ProggyClean CE Nerd Font" "Regular"
ProggyCleanNerdFont-Regular.ttf: "ProggyClean Nerd Font" "Regular"
Font Awesome 7 Brands-Regular-400.otf: "Font Awesome 7 Brands" "Regular"
Font Awesome 7 Free-Regular-400.otf: "Font Awesome 7 Free" "Regular"
FreeMono.otf: "FreeMono" "Regular"

I am honestly not sure which config file I need to change to try Nokolai5's config, but I will try it out as soon as I find it.

Arch Linux

#1 Today 10:30:42

Japanise Character Fonts

#2 Today 16:41:20

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#3 Today 17:07:38

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#4 Today 18:03:47

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#5 Today 18:36:14

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#6 Today 18:50:14

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#7 Today 19:05:15

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#8 Today 19:07:39

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#9 Today 19:15:30

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#10 Today 20:30:04

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

#11 Today 21:16:48

Re: Japanise Character Fonts

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