Japanese font problem

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fixerdave
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 26 Feb 2012, 07:44

Japanese font problem

#1 Post by fixerdave »

I have this reasonably nice laptop, with no HD and flaky USB ports. Puppy to the rescue! (5.2.8 Lucid) Except...

I'm setting up a media player - and I have these Japanese kids songs that a very helpful friend in Japan threw on a MP3 player for us. Now, I, of course, copied them to my music library. All is well, except for Puppy. Puppy can't deal with the odd Japanese font this person used. I've managed to get Japanese fonts in general working... yahoo.co.jp renders just fine. Text renders fine, everything looks good, except for these particular song filenames.

The song names show up fine under Ubuntu or Windows. I've attempted to copy over my entire Ubuntu font directory to Puppy, and run:
# su
# fc-cache -f -v
to reload the font cache, and restarted X. Still no luck.

I've tried msmincho and msgothic. I've tried lang_pack_ja-lupq-0.5.pet, I've tried font_japanese.pet. I've tried drinking! That helped, but isn't going to make this laptop into a media center.

Here's the font: トーマス

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Makoto
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#2 Post by Makoto »

It could possibly be a Unicode issue - Japanese is currently supposed to be written in ID3 tags using UTF-8. Since you have at least one Windows setup, you might try copying the arialuni.ttf font to your Puppy setup. (I don't know if you need to reboot, though.)

Also, whether or not your particular player is set up to, allows, or even was compiled with that as an option - display such tags correctly, may be an issue. I had that problem with one or two players under my Puppy setup, even with Unicode fonts like arialuni installed.
[ Puppy 4.3.1 JP, Frugal install ] * [ XenialPup 7.5, Frugal install ] * [XenialPup 64 7.5, Frugal install] * [ 4GB RAM | 512MB swap ]
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L18L
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Re: Japanese font problem

#3 Post by L18L »

fixerdave wrote:... Is there anything else I can try?...
Maybe another player?

fixerdave
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 26 Feb 2012, 07:44

now I'm really confused

#4 Post by fixerdave »

The font/chars I cut/pasted in above show up fine under Opera in my puppy install. Nothing else will, including a folder I created and named via Anthy in Ubuntu. Oddly enough, Opera will not show the local files with Japanese names, yet the same name renders just fine via html.

Here I was thinking it was the font, but maybe it's the rendering. I know the web renders them, now, and I saw a text file show them... I'll do more cut/pasting to verify that.

I'm in the process of grabbing that arialuni.ttf font now... no, not in the Win7 fonts folder... still looking. I might have to run up an XP VM to see if it's there.

But, now I'm thinking that I just picked the wrong puppy - I don't need Lucid, it's just that I come from an Ubuntu background and that seemed, oh, I don't know, a little more homey.

I've tried the console, 2 file managers (the XFE one), Songbirds, Banshee, DeadBeef... I had assumed it was the font. Now, I'm got some more figuring. Sigh.

Thanks for the note about arialuni.ttf. Search says it's not in Win7, so I'll look elsewhere, in between testing out some other stuff.

> ...I had that problem with one or two players under my Puppy setup,..

Can I ask which ones didn't have trouble?

Oh, and thanks for the quick response.

David...

fixerdave
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 26 Feb 2012, 07:44

something about filenames

#5 Post by fixerdave »

So, another quick test. Pasting the Japanese filename into a txt file and Geany shows it just fine, yet Geany won't let me open a file with that name. I can cut/paste the Japanese text from one file to another, but Geany won't let me save or rename a file with that name, just says it's invalid.

Now, I'm beginning to suspect that if I renamed one of my Japanese music files, it would open in some of the players I've tested and they would probably show the Japanese meta tags. It's whatever is supporting the file manager, something low enough to be used for both the console and ROX filer, and the XFE file manager I tried too.

Now, I'm thinking I should just move to another Puppy variant. Any suggestions? Can someone try to cut/paste ーマス

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666philb
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Location: wales ... by the sea

#6 Post by 666philb »

hi fixerdave

cutting and pasting the font 'ーマス
Bionicpup64 built with bionic beaver packages http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=114311
Xenialpup64, built with xenial xerus packages http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=107331

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L18L
Posts: 3479
Joined: Sat 19 Jun 2010, 18:56
Location: www.eussenheim.de/

Japanese font problem

#7 Post by L18L »

fixerdave wrote:...Now, I'm thinking I should just move to another Puppy variant. Any suggestions?...
wary has Japanese, is Japanese and made by Japanese :D

fixerdave
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 26 Feb 2012, 07:44

#8 Post by fixerdave »

I've installed the font, done the font cache update thing, but not restarted X yet... wanted to finish this post first. No difference so far...
666philb wrote:... with unicode turned on ...
What does this mean? Am I missing something really stupid?

Oh, thanks for the test. Now I know I'm just missing something. Probably something stupid. Sigh, wouldn't be the first time.

David...

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666philb
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Location: wales ... by the sea

#9 Post by 666philb »

i don't know if unicode is the problem, but to turn it on/off
Menu >> Desktop >> Chooselocale country localisation (and enable UTF8)
Bionicpup64 built with bionic beaver packages http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=114311
Xenialpup64, built with xenial xerus packages http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=107331

fixerdave
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 26 Feb 2012, 07:44

#10 Post by fixerdave »

interesting... The locale setting that allow unicode doesn't come up unless you pick something besides the default, which I of course didn't bother doing. So, no, unicode was not enabled. However, it looks like I'm still getting the same results. Text in web pages and geany works fine while the ROX term and ROX file manager do not.

I still need to test alternative file manager ... oh, spoke too soon,

It looks like I can now rename files and see them with the Japanese text, but the original files still don't show... maybe it's cached somehow, they are over a samba share.

So, yeah, lots of progress.

Thank you for steering me in the right direction, even if it did turn out that I was making a stupid mistake. Lessons learned, I'll get this figured out yet.. Though, not tonight, it's getting late (like, closing in on 4am) and I have to get some sleep. Tomorrow... I'll have another go.

Thanks again,

David...

fixerdave
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 26 Feb 2012, 07:44

Re: Japanese font problem

#11 Post by fixerdave »

L18L wrote:
fixerdave wrote:...Now, I'm thinking I should just move to another Puppy variant. Any suggestions?...
wary has Japanese, is Japanese and made by Japanese :D
Sigh, I tried wary and am getting the same issue I'm now getting with lucid. I can see fonts in a unicode text file and paste those names to directories or files, but I still can't see the original files. If the Japanese version doesn't work, I've got no hope. It must be some base limitation with Puppy, maybe something to do with the samba share.

Anyway, I'm going to abandon this approach and just start renaming the original files as I need them.

Thanks for all the input. I've learned a lot in the process,

David...

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Aitch
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Location: Chatham, Kent, UK

#12 Post by Aitch »


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