Not a huge technical challenge for you but something I find a tiny bit tedious. In Firefox, I can see some special characters or graphics but others are just squares with numbers or diamonds with a question mark inside. I've tried using a font with a bigger file (so more characters to pick from) but that hasn't solved it. Is it a unicode problem? Or something else entirely? (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Firefox 26.0) Is there something in Synaptic I need to install? etc etc.
Bev.
On 22/06/14 12:37, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Not a huge technical challenge for you but something I find a tiny bit tedious. In Firefox, I can see some special characters or graphics but others are just squares with numbers or diamonds with a question mark inside. I've tried using a font with a bigger file (so more characters to pick from) but that hasn't solved it. Is it a unicode problem? Or something else entirely? (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Firefox 26.0) Is there something in Synaptic I need to install? etc etc.
A stab in the dark here: Many websites assume that they're going to be shown on a Windows machine, or a Mac. They may assume a set of installed fonts, that you may not have. They *should* work if the specific fonts aren't installed, but some don't.
You could try installing the package "ttf-mscorefonts-installer" - This installs the "core" set of Windows fonts. Try this and see if it works any better.
If it doesn't, post a link to a website that doesn't work and we may be able to see if it doesn't work for us and what to do about it.
Steve
On 22/06/14 22:59, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 22/06/14 12:37, Bev Nicolson wrote:
Not a huge technical challenge for you but something I find a tiny bit tedious. In Firefox, I can see some special characters or graphics but others are just squares with numbers or diamonds with a question mark inside. I've tried using a font with a bigger file (so more characters to pick from) but that hasn't solved it. Is it a unicode problem? Or something else entirely? (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Firefox 26.0) Is there something in Synaptic I need to install? etc etc.
You could try installing the package "ttf-mscorefonts-installer" - This installs the "core" set of Windows fonts. Try this and see if it works any better.
If it doesn't, post a link to a website that doesn't work and we may be able to see if it doesn't work for us and what to do about it.
Steve
That was something I did sometime ago, actually. Here are two examples then:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_des_caract%C3%A8res_Unicode/UA720
http://superuser.com/questions/693552/some-unicode-characters-work-everywher...
The character map in Ubuntu has never shown the full range of options either. Some of the other issues are with what are probably 'webdings'. (Not all though. I do have 'dingbats', for example.)
Bev.
On 23 June 2014 09:43, Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk wrote:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_des_caract%C3%A8res_Unicode/UA720
On my Ubuntu (actually Kubuntu) box, using Chrome, I get a full set of characters on this page.
The same page on Chrome on my Windows 7 box gives mostly the "missing character" boxes. So I have exactly the reverse problem that you have!
On 23/06/14 10:11, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 23 June 2014 09:43, Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk wrote:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_des_caract%C3%A8res_Unicode/UA720
On my Ubuntu (actually Kubuntu) box, using Chrome, I get a full set of characters on this page.
The same page on Chrome on my Windows 7 box gives mostly the "missing character" boxes. So I have exactly the reverse problem that you have!
Tried Chrome too. Nope.
"Having worked on lots of websites over the years it is incredibly easy to cause this problem at the developer end and nothing you can do at the browser end will fix it."
But if the character map (Applications> Accessories> Character Map) doesn't show them all either is it 'just' a web developer problem? My (admittedly inexperienced) money is still on a configuration problem. Willing to be proved wrong, though.
Bev.
On 23/06/14 10:11, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 23 June 2014 09:43, Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk wrote:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_des_caract%C3%A8res_Unicode/UA720
On my Ubuntu (actually Kubuntu) box, using Chrome, I get a full set of characters on this page.
The same page on Chrome on my Windows 7 box gives mostly the "missing character" boxes. So I have exactly the reverse problem that you have!
On my Lubuntu, I get several missing character symbols in Firefox, Opera and Chromium. The fact that it's working on Marks gives cause for hope that it can be "fixed". I suspect that it's font files not installed on Bev's and my computers, but I don't know which ones.
So try installing fonts, or try different browsers. Not very helpful I'm afraid.
Looking at the html code for the page, it uses at two style sheets. This one:
https://bits.wikimedia.org/fr.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=fr...
Lists some fonts, but exactly what they apply to is beyond me... Search for font-family and you'll see several. You could try installing them, if they're available.
Also, if it's primarily French characters that's causing you a problem, perhaps you could try installing a "Language Pack" in firefox. Tools/Add Ons/Language. I've got a British one installed. Presumably there's an equivalent for French. I seem to remember that there are also Language options available to Ubuntu, somewhere in the menu structure - try installing French there too.
Good luck. Steve
On 23 June 2014 11:08, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
The fact that it's working on Marks gives cause for hope that it can be "fixed". I suspect that it's font files not installed on Bev's and my computers, but I don't know which ones.
If my interpretation of Chrome's developer tools is correct then on my PC it is being rendered using "DejaVu Sans".
That seems to be supplied by package fonts-dejavu or maybe fonts-dejavu-extra
If you have those installed already then maybe it's another font that you also have installed that's taking priority, although I don't know enough about how fonts are selected to be able to help much there.
On 23/06/14 11:30, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 23 June 2014 11:08, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
The fact that it's working on Marks gives cause for hope that it can be "fixed". I suspect that it's font files not installed on Bev's and my computers, but I don't know which ones.
If my interpretation of Chrome's developer tools is correct then on my PC it is being rendered using "DejaVu Sans".
That seems to be supplied by package fonts-dejavu or maybe fonts-dejavu-extra
If you have those installed already then maybe it's another font that you also have installed that's taking priority, although I don't know enough about how fonts are selected to be able to help much there.
How would I go about identifying what the glyphs/graphics are, by the way? Perhaps if I can narrow that down I might work out what I could do with installing.
Bev.
On 02/07/14 17:00, Bev Nicolson wrote:
On 23/06/14 11:30, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 23 June 2014 11:08, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
The fact that it's working on Marks gives cause for hope that it can be "fixed". I suspect that it's font files not installed on Bev's and my computers, but I don't know which ones.
If my interpretation of Chrome's developer tools is correct then on my PC it is being rendered using "DejaVu Sans".
That seems to be supplied by package fonts-dejavu or maybe fonts-dejavu-extra
If you have those installed already then maybe it's another font that you also have installed that's taking priority, although I don't know enough about how fonts are selected to be able to help much there.
How would I go about identifying what the glyphs/graphics are, by the way? Perhaps if I can narrow that down I might work out what I could do with installing.
Bev.
If anyone's still interested, I asked someone using them in the end. It looks like a dingbats/webdings thing, and I'm assuming it's impossible (?) to upgrade on Linux? (I do have deja vu etc installed, btw.)
Bev.
On 22 June 2014 22:59, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
If it doesn't, post a link to a website that doesn't work and we may be able to see if it doesn't work for us and what to do about it.
Having worked on lots of websites over the years it is incredibly easy to cause this problem at the developer end and nothing you can do at the browser end will fix it.
The "source code" for a typical webpage may comprise dozens of text files (at the server end, this is mostly unrelated to the source you see in the browser when you "view source"). The file encoding of each of those text files can be different, meaning that when they are combined you can get weird results. Add to that the fact that much of the content itself will come from a database and can again be encoded differently...
And then there's what happens when you copy+paste from one source into another.
In theory, unusual entities should be encoded in the code in a non-ambiguous form, eg "£" for the pound sign, but often they're not, and even that has issues if not properly tracked.
That doesn't mean the issues you see aren't configuration issues at your end, but equally I wouldn't assume they are unless I have tested on multiple browsers on multiple operating systems and it's only the multiple browsers on my Linux box that have the problem.
-
Bev Nicolson -
Mark Rogers -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk