squares instead of letters, how to solve it?
-
hamad59 last edited by
I have this problem whem I'm browsing Arabic forums , texts inside the quotations always in squares for some reason, what should I do?
also when I'm looking for a vid on youtube and and there are other ways to search for the vid, it put it in squares like in the pic -
sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
Squares are a common "missing character symbol", they indicate that the characters to be shown are not available in the requested font. Your best bet would be to find out what font that is and try to find an updated version which includes those characters.
Are you perhaps using an older version of Windows?
-
hamad59 last edited by
I use other browsers and I don't get this problem, unless there's a way that I can add fonts to the browser itself
-
donq last edited by donq
Look, no one can say anything meaningful unless you post some (public) link to page, where other people can check erroneus behavior. Best would be page, which doesn't depend on visitor regional and language preferences.
-
sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
@donq Obviously the page is showing search results on some news or social site, a link by itself wouldn't do much, I need to know what was typed to understand why half of it is shown as squares.
Come to think of it, this is probably one of those Google webfonts rather than a font on the user's computer, and so might be blocked by the anti-tracking features. Though (as you said) we do need a link to see what font is used, the search term would still help.
-
hamad59 last edited by
I would provide a link, no problem
but it's in Arabic, coz I don't have problems with english texts.https://www.sama3y.net/forum/showpost.php?p=452022&postcount=29
-
donq last edited by donq
@hamad59
Just for information - this site uses mostly next font families (browser uses first font it finds from list): "verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif"
In some places I noticed "Arial Black" too.
Textboxes use same list.Is it possible that Verana is somehow corrupted? It should be installed by default; I have seen cases, when some system font is overriden by some bad installer. Latest font file versions should be 5.33 - according to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/fonts/windows_10_font_list
Another possibility is that I didn't find correct textbox or corrupted text. If you see squares, right-click on those, open "Inspect element" from menu (this should open dev tools) and check (in Styles, right side panel), which font (font list) is used.
-
hamad59 last edited by
font family : arial black
font style : italic
btw, I'm using another browser and I don't have this problem, so I think it's the browser not the system. -
leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by
@hamad59 said in squares instead of letters, how to solve it?:
btw, I'm using another browser and I don't have this problem, so I think it's the browser not the system.
Just because a page works in a browser and not in other, doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is on that other browser. They may not even seeing the same site.
-
burnout426 Volunteer last edited by burnout426
@hamad59 said in squares instead of letters, how to solve it?:
I would provide a link, no problem
but it's in Arabic, coz I don't have problems with english texts.https://www.sama3y.net/forum/showpost.php?p=452022&postcount=29
For me, the text in both of the posts on that page is all squares in both Opera Stable and Opera Beta. Masking as Chrome doesn't help. The latest snapshot of Vivaldi is messed up in the same way. So is Chromium-based Edge and Brave.
Looks fine in Chrome Stable and Opera Developer though. en_US locale in all the browsers and in Windows 10 in my case.
Looks like I might need a Chromium-based browser based on Chromium 82 or newer for things to display right, except for Chrome, which works fine in Chrome Stable, which is based on 81 (Vivaldi latest snapshot is based on 81 and a build newer than Chrome Stable).
-
donq last edited by
@hamad59 said in squares instead of letters, how to solve it?:
btw, I'm using another browser and I don't have this problem, so I think it's the browser not the system.
What another browser? You shuld verify with Chromium based browsers, like Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave - they use very similar engine.
If those browsers display everything correctly, then maybe you could convince some of your friends to check same sites with Opera Portable - this way you could easily decide between your system and Opera browser problems. -
burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
@burnout426 If I remove style="font-style: italic" on the div the text is in, the Arabic text renders fine in Opera Stable.
-
burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
@burnout426 I wonder if it's something like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=668813#c1 (old Mozilla bug).
-
donq last edited by
@burnout426
Looks like similar issue.
What I didn't notice previously - Arial Black has no italic style variant (in Windows) and this may create problem for Opera (or entire Chromium family).@hamad59
I think You should report this problem using Opera bug report system (Menu - Help - Report an issue... - Report a bug). -
hamad59 last edited by
I reported a bug, and waiting for an answer, hopefully with a solution.
thanks to all of you guys, you've been helpful