Help displaying special characters.

Odd-rationale · 2008-02-28 18:13:45

Hello!

I am having trouble displaying special characters. I am using kdemod - I don't know whether it is a problem with X11 or the DE.

When I go to KDE Control Center --> Coutry/Region & Language and change my language, some of the characters looks like rectangles. I already installed the "kdemod-kde-i18n-xx" for my language. So I do not know why this is happening.

Your help is greatly appreciated!

peets · 2008-02-28 22:17:21

I don't know a thing about DEs.

If you see rectangles instead of the characters you're supposed to see, it may be that your font does not provide glyphs for those characters.

If you see strange characters (maybe squares?) instead of what you want, it may be an encoding problem: the text is encoded one way, but the program displaying it expects it to be encoded a different way.

I don't think this is X11's fault. I have a pretty basic x.org setup (I never tweaked any localisation options) and I'm able to see unicode with no problem (I often see glyphs that I can't recognize on "foreign" web sites).

P.S. I hate the word "foreign".

Odd-rationale · 2008-02-29 20:59:34

The characters I'm having issues with are a "j" with a "^" on top, or "u" with "^" on top. Do you have these characters?

Majorix · 2008-02-29 22:21:08

Check here:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=44020
And see if you are experience is the same as mine.

Odd-rationale · 2008-03-01 15:12:17

Similar. Just a bunch of rectangles where characters should be. I'm trying to learn a "foreign" language (a language other than English, that is) and these characters make it difficult for me to view the website where I take my courses.

wuischke · 2008-03-01 15:43:40

Can you see the following characters? ĵ û Ĵ Û ç Ç õ Õ

Odd-rationale · 2008-03-01 20:58:20

Actually, yes. I can see all those characters!

However, if I copy and paste those to, say, my address bar, I get the rectangles. Strange...

Last edited by Odd-rationale (2008-03-01 20:58:43)

carlocci · 2008-03-01 22:21:51

Odd-rationale wrote:

Actually, yes. I can see all those characters!
However, if I copy and paste those to, say, my address bar, I get the rectangles. Strange...

Funny, me too (kdemod)
I can't see "ĵ" and "Ĵ", which I can see here.
If I copy the characters to the address bar and copy them back I get them right again.

It looks like the glyph is missing, but it shouldn't since the font is the same... (bitstream-vera-sans)
I'm having some problems with fonts and unicode since I installed arch, but I don't know anything about fonts and character sets, and linux variables about them.
Any good guide?

Majorix · 2008-03-01 22:43:59

Look here for a catastrophe:
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y122/E … terMap.png

There are a few pages like that in my Character Map application.

carlocci · 2008-03-02 01:39:59

Majorix wrote:

Look here for a catastrophe:
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y122/E … terMap.png
There are a few pages like that in my Character Map application.

AFAIK, it's normal.
Not every font has every unicode glyph (meaning the drawing of the character).
I suppose the 4 ascii characters you see instead of the glyph represent the 4 bytes of the unicode character in the UTF8 encoding.

wuischke · 2008-03-02 01:40:27

OK, what locales do you use? And do you have fonts for Thai (I assume you are talking about Thai when you speak about a language with ĵ and û) installed? The forum uses Unicode, maybe your websites use some locale encoding which your fonts don't support.

I use currently pt_PT.UTF-8 with a German keyboard layout and I've no special fonts installed and I can display and write everything just fine. (xmonad + Opera)

Odd-rationale · 2008-03-02 03:03:21

I am using the en_US.utf8 locale. And I did install the thai fonts (although Thai is not the language I am trying to use).

I have a similar problem with my character map. It is filled with rectangles.

There must be a way to get this working. Because, well, it worked in Ubuntu......

Majorix · 2008-03-02 19:48:59

carlocci wrote:

Majorix wrote:
Look here for a catastrophe:
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y122/E … terMap.png
There are a few pages like that in my Character Map application.
AFAIK, it's normal.
Not every font has every unicode glyph (meaning the drawing of the character).
I suppose the 4 ascii characters you see instead of the glyph represent the 4 bytes of the unicode character in the UTF8 encoding.

The problem is, it doesn't matter which font I would use. Those dices are always there.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-28 18:13:45

Help displaying special characters.

#2 2008-02-28 22:17:21

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#3 2008-02-29 20:59:34

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#4 2008-02-29 22:21:08

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#5 2008-03-01 15:12:17

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#6 2008-03-01 15:43:40

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#7 2008-03-01 20:58:20

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#8 2008-03-01 22:21:51

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#9 2008-03-01 22:43:59

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#10 2008-03-02 01:39:59

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#11 2008-03-02 01:40:27

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#12 2008-03-02 03:03:21

Re: Help displaying special characters.

#13 2008-03-02 19:48:59

Re: Help displaying special characters.

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