qt and asian fonts

Wiles · #1 2nd December 2006, 03:31 PM

I notice that kwrite, kate, quanta, etc. all display squares instead of japanese/korean/chinese characters. I have those languages installed, and can view asian websites with firefox and epiphany. but konqueror, and other kde based apps can't show the fonts correctly. I have also tried setting the default font for quanta's editor to an asian font, but quanta still shows squares. How can i fix this?

contents · #2 13th February 2007, 06:50 PM

I've got the exact same problem. I tried booting it in kde to fix it, but was unsuccessful. The kde font installer shows all of my Chinese fonts installed, but when I try to add Chinese as a language in "Coutry/Region & Language", everything turns to little squares again. I'm guessing that kde is looking for Chinese fonts in the wrong path (though for some reason the font installer still finds them).

I asked about this in the kde irc chatroom, but they said that different distributions handle font issues differently, and told me to go ask fedora people.

Does anyone know about the correct font paths or font configuration method for kde (preferably without using the control center gui, because that's not working for me). Does anyone know what should be the correct font path for kde apps, or where the kde/qt font config files are?

Thanks

annonymous · #3 18th February 2007, 07:55 AM

I have a similar problem and it's driving me absolutely nuts. Beginning to regret running Linux...

Anyway after some hours banging my head I figured out you can get the Chinese characters to show up in KDE applications and all programs' title bars (in KDE) by installing......... Japanese. (Fedora menu -> System -> Add/Remove Software, Language section.) Restart KDE and no more big squares.

But it only fixed Traditional characters! Every character that's different in simplified form shows up as a (character box-wise) centered dot among the other characters. e.g. 简体字 shows up as dot-dot-字

If someone can point me in the right direction I'd be really grateful!

alpha645 · #4 18th February 2007, 08:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by annonymous

I have a similar problem and it's driving me absolutely nuts. Beginning to regret running Linux...

Anyway after some hours banging my head I figured out you can get the Chinese characters to show up in KDE applications and all programs' title bars (in KDE) by installing......... Japanese. (Fedora menu -> System -> Add/Remove Software, Language section.) Restart KDE and no more big squares.

But it only fixed Traditional characters! Every character that's different in simplified form shows up as a (character box-wise) centered dot among the other characters. e.g. 简体字 shows up as dot-dot-字

If someone can point me in the right direction I'd be really grateful!

Ehm, I think you guys should look at the X-server. Especially the man xorg.conf . I remember a option for Chinese fonts there. I'm not sure, but have a look. It had something to do with 'Canna'.

icydog · #5 18th February 2007, 09:16 AM

I had this problem too. I solved it by removing a Japanese font. I forgot the name of the exact font, but the system was trying to display Chinese using the Japanese font that did not in fact have those Chinese characters. Removing the Japanese font allowed the actual Chinese fonts to be used correctly.

Try rpm -qa |grep font and see if you can remove ones you don't need. I have a vague feeling it was a font called MS Mincho in one of those packages (you might try "locate mincho" followed by "rpm -qf (path to that file)"), but I'm not sure.

annonymous · #6 18th February 2007, 05:20 PM

Thanks for your response. I looked in my xorg.conf and it's pretty basic in there--everything's keyboard, video device, or display in there and no mention of fonts. Would the xorg instructions at http://wqy.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/e...gi?Dou_INSTALL be similar to what you remember?

By the way, like the other guys, all the characters show up fine in Firefox and the like--just KDE applications having problems.

annonymous · #7 18th February 2007, 06:00 PM

THANKS!! That was exactly it. Doesn't even look like Japanese is broken, though I wonder if it would be a problem for someone who wanted to use both languages a lot.

Anyway, followed the last bit of your directions for success. The exact commands (packages) were:

Code:

su -c 'rpm -e openoffice.org-langpack-ja_JP-2.0.4-5.5.10.i386'
su -c 'rpm -e fonts-japanese-0.20061016-1.fc6'

contents · #8 11th April 2007, 05:32 AM

I didn't have any Japanese or other Asian fonts installed, so this solution didn't work for me.

I found this answer in another post :

Quote:

I also noticed this problem occurring. On a new installation of FC6, the fonts in the KDE control panel are set to "sans" and with this setting, chinese fonts cannot be viewed in any KDE app. But when you press the "defaults" button in control panel, it changes all the "sans" to "sans serif" (which isn't listed as a font you can choose), and the chinese characters come up. Unfortunately with subsequent updates to KDE, pressing the 'defaults' button doesnt set it to "sans serif" anymore

So I have actually have to go into the .kde/ and manually change "sans" to "sans serif" in every config files (include amarok).

Switching to serif fonts worked for me. I wasn't able to get Chinese to display when using "sans" fonts at all.

chavash · #9 9th May 2007, 05:42 PM

Hello Friends, I am new here and Fedora (and Linux) are new things for me. I don't see the japanese and chinese symbols. I tried to change from Sans to Serif. But it didn't help.

contents · #10 5th July 2007, 01:58 PM

I'm still using fc6 (BLAG 60k, actually), and the same problem with kde not displaying Chinese characters ocurred again after a long period of working correctly. I think that it might have been caused by upgrading to the new skype 1.4, because that brought in qt4 as a dependency. (One of the kde bug fixers had responded to my original bug report that the problem that required switching from sans to serif was a qt3 font substitution problem). It might have also been caused by updating kde, or some other update.

Now I've got everything working again. This is how I think I solved the problem. I installed fontconfig, and then edited the following files by hand:

/etc/fonts/fonts.config
/etc/fonts/conf.avail/65-nonlatin.conf
/etc/fonts/conf.d/64-nonlatin-fedora.conf
(and I think that's it, though there might have been one or two more)

Each of those files has lists of non-English fonts that will be substituted for serif, sans-serif, and monospace. In each file, I had to cut and paste to make sure that the Chinese font was the first choice for substitution.

After I did that, I restarted, and then Chinese reappeared in kde apps. I was even able to use kcontrol to change the default kde font back to sans, and Chinese still came out displaying properly.

As I say, I think that's what fixed the problem.