Broken Text Encoding After Routine OS Update
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noslay last edited by
After updating to OS Sequoia 15.7 (a routine security update), my Opera text encoding completely broke – for nearly every website in any language, almost every character displays as a question mark in a box. Updating my Opera version to current (122.0.5643.24) did not resolve the issue. No other web browsers on my machine appear to have been affected. An add-on to manually change text encoding did not have any effect.
How can this be repaired (without loss of current tabs, history, and other data)? How could this have happened in the first place?
Thank you.
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burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
As a test, while Opera is completely closed, in "~/Library/Application Support", you can rename "com.operasoftware.Opera" to "com.operasoftware.Operaold" to test with fresh data to test if it's even something with settings/data. When you're done testing, you can delete the new folder and rename the old one back.
You can also try testing with fresh data like this in a terminal:
/Applications/Opera.app/Contents/MacOS/Opera --user-data-dir="$HOME/Desktop/Opera Test"Or, like this:
open -a "Opera" --args --user-data-dir="$HOME/Desktop/Opera Test"For open tabs, you can right-click on a tab, goto "save" and choose "all tabs to a speed dial folder". If you make user of workspaces, repeat for other workspaces. If you have more than one Opera window open, repeat everything for each extra window. Then, goto the URL
opera://bookmarksand use the drop-down at the bottom left to export your bookmarks to an HTML file. Then, if you need your bookmarks back in a new Opera profile, you can goto the URLopera://settings/importData, choose "Bookmarks HTML file" in the drop-down and import the HTML file. Then, gotoopera://bookmarksand move the imported bookmarks and speed dials to where you want. And, for open tabs, you can right-click on those speed dial folders you create and choose "open all in tabs". You can do this for the other workspaces too after you create the workspaces in the new profile. That will get your open tabs back.At the URL
opera://password-manager/settings, you can export your passwords to a CSV file to back them up. Always just the CSV file in a text editor though to make sure everything is there. Then, if needed your passwords back in a new Opera profile, you can go back to that password manager URL and import the CSV file.For history, you can back up the "Default/History" file in "com.operasoftware.Opera" and use that backup to replace the "History" file in a new profile to get your history back.
For bookmarks, you can back up the "Bookmarks" and "BookmarksExtras" in the "Default" folder and use them to replace the existing ones in a new profile.
For open tabs, you can back up the "Sessions" folder in the "Default" folder. Then, in a new profile, you can delete everything in the "Sessions" folder and copy over the files from your backup.
For passwords, you might be able to back up the "Local State" file and the "Login Data" file in the "Default" folder and use those to replace the new ones in the new profile.
It's always good to back up things in multiple ways.
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sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
@noslay A question mark in a box? Some iOS version of a missing character symbol? Sounds like the update included some new emoji font, but Opera is accepting it as a replacement for a standard font.. If Opera for iOS has font settings available, make sure they are set to reasonable fonts.
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noslay last edited by
@burnout426 said in Broken Text Encoding After Routine OS Update:
Sessions
Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately, the issue persisted in this test setup. See attached screenshot from the freshly opened test.
@sgunhouse this is not iOS and does not involve emojis or non-standard fonts.
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noslay last edited by
@sgunhouse Can you be significantly more concrete? Otherwise this would not appear to be the right track. Thanks.
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burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
@noslay said in Broken Text Encoding After Routine OS Update:
Unfortunately, the issue persisted in this test setup.
Any difference with graphics acceleration disabled at the URL
opera://settings/system?You could uninstall Opera (don't choose to delete your data when uninstalling) and reinstall it just to make sure its program files are not corrupted.
You can restart macOS if you haven't yet since you discovered the issue.
You can test in Opera Developer just to test if it happens there too or not. Maybe it's fixed there. You can get it from the Developer section at https://www.opera.com/download.
You can test in Opera GX to see if it happens there too or not.
Not sure what other browsers you tested in, but you can test specifically in Vivaldi and Brave for example to see if it happens there too or not.
I guess you can load the Font Book app, select all your fonts, goto "File" and choose "Validate selection" to check for font issues.
If you can roll back the update and reinstall the update, that might do the trick.
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noslay last edited by
Thanks for these additional suggestions.
No difference with graphics acceleration disabled.
I have restarted my computer multiple times.
I am able to use Safari, Chrome, and Firefox without this issue at all. Before updating to Opera version 122, I had been on version 114, and it was while on that version that I first experienced the error.
I downloaded OperaGX - same problem. Downloaded Vivaldi – somewhat better there, but issue still present. Downloaded Brave – no problems there.
Unfortunately I do not have any way of rolling back the OS update.
I checked Font Book. There are numerous validation problems. I do not know how to resolve them. There only seem to be "serious problems" with exotic fonts that have no bearing here. Nearly every font is getting flagged for the "minor problem" of having a duplicate. However, these alleged duplicates are not visible anywhere. I have ran the automated function to resolve duplicates multiple times. ...How could these minor Font Book hiccups could kill text in Opera and not other browsers?
I have noticed other weird behaviors that I do not understand, particularly when googling. For example, this search gets me ?-boxes...
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=mandarin+language&sourceid=opera&iе=UTF-8&0e=UTF-8
...but
https://www.google.com/search?&q=mandarin+language
...gets a result that's legible except for a few ?-boxes for some Chinese characters. But sometimes hacking off the "extraneous" portion of the search url doesn't improve the output, especially when I search through the searchbar. Same happened when I google other languages (Hindi, Macedonian) or even "Verizon Wireless". In gmail - everything in the inbox (subjects, text previews) looks fine, but when I open an email or try to write one, it's all ?-boxes.Given the uninterrupted functionality of other pre-existing browsers (S, F, C) and the mixed results with freshly downloaded browsers (GX, V, B ), does an Opera re-install make sense?
Would a full re-install preserve my currently open tabs? Since I have an enormous number of tabs open and it is more important for me to retain those tabs rather than fix the text (those tabs represent all of my current projects – I can at least copy their URLs to a functioning browser to continue working from where I left off), I am reluctant to do anything that would put them at risk.
Thanks again.
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