Version: (using KDE 4.0.3) Installed from: Ubuntu Packages OS: Linux On several systems running Linux, I've attempted to view Chinese text in KDE apps, and in all cases the simplified Chinese characters in the text are simply empty boxes. The problem has been going on for more than a year. When I researched it earlier, it sounded like it was a qt3 font mapping problem and would be fixed in KDE4; however, I'm still getting boxes in Konqueror 4.0.3 under Kubuntu 7.10. Steps to reproduce: 1) Open Konqueror 2) Navigate to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character Look right at the beginning where it says, "... or Hanzi (simplified Chinese:" If you are experiencing this bug, the next character is an empty box. Otherwise the simplified "han" character will display correctly. For those unfamiliar with how the character should appear, it might be described as three marks on the left with an X-like figure on the right. Known workarounds: I read that users with zh_CN locale are not affected. Last year I got simplified characters by installing a new Chinese font, which I believe was called HKSCS by LiquidX, but the link is now broken. Details on which characters are misprinted: 10% of the thousands of Chinese characters were simplified last century, but some locales chose to not simplify (and keep what we call "traditional" characters). But for 90% of characters and even some short sequences of them, the simplified and traditional representations are the same. In "simplified" text, i.e. on sites in simplified locales or wherever a simplified character encoding is used, the characters that were not simplified (in that 90%) display fine in Konqueror and other KDE apps. For example, where the "han" character in "Hanzi" is different from the traditional Chinese representation that follows, the "zi" characters are the same. The point is, only the characters that got simplified are misprinted via this bug, leading me to suspect fonts and font substitutions rather than encodings as its cause.
Hmm. Not distro specific. on 4.0 branch r802901 (~4.0.4) If it is fixed in qt4.4, then neither of us would see it, as trunk (what will become 4.1) is using it, but not 4.0.x Can someone check? And what does this get filed under?
I'm going to be really annoying here, and suggest that this is probably the fault of your distributions :). I've tested this here, using the "unified chinese true type font" which is shipped with Mandriva, and both simplified and traditional characters display fine in KDE apps once it is installed. (The font file names are uming.ttf and ukai.ttf).
Have you had any luck resolving this bug? Were you able to get the "Unified Chinese TTF" that I mentioned before? Did it solve the problem?
George, Thanks for following up. I figured out to simply do "sudo apt-get install ttf-arphic-uming ttf-arphic-ukai" and it works--readable characters where boxes were. There is still a cosmetic problem that all the Simplified Chinese characters, the ones that weren't displaying at all before, are now shown in a different style, more flowing and rounded than the other (Traditional) characters. Again this is only showing up in KDE apps. Firefox shows all characters in the flowing and rounded style, matching KDE's Simplified characters. What is the underlying issue? Is this flowing/rounded font being substituted for a missing blocky font for the Simplified characters? Can you report what occurs on Mandriva? I can provide some screenshots if it would help. I don't know how a user (myself included) would control the consistency of style here.
Hi propedor, I wonder if you could attach screenshots of the problem, as I'm not able to reproduce it on my system. thanks.
Created attachment 27753 [details] Screenshot showing mixed Chinese fonts Compare the highlighted text in Firefox to its counterpart in Konqueror. As in the highlighted text, all KDE apps are showing Simplified characters in one font and Traditional characters apparently in another.
Attached a screenshot comparing FF and Konqueror on the Simplified Chinese version of the Wikipedia page on the PRC (url: http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%BD&variant=zh-hans ) Firefox (upper window) shows all the highlighted characters in a script-like style: flowing, rounded, the horizontal strokes are not perfectly level. Konqueror (lower window) shows all Simplified characters in that style, and all Traditional characters in a blocky, square, printed style. The styles mix in the highlighted text. Of the thirteen characters, characters 2, 3, 5, and 11 are the Simplified ones. (Incidentally, Firefox on Windows shows all characters as blocky.)
Well, 3 years has passed. I can't reproduce metioned problmes. Is this still a problem for the reporter?