[gentoo-user] Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[gentoo-user] Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[Michael Hampicke]

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I've been having this problem for a while, but I never bothered to
really look into it, but now, I want to do something about it.

Thing is, when I view messages in Thunderbird - I use TB13 - that are
encoded in GB2312 and have chinese characters in them, the font looks
rather ugly. Unicode messages with or without chinese characters look
much better. I attached a screenshot for you to see what I mean.

I googled around for a bit but all the guides I could find were really
outdated or pointed to other guids that were also outdated.

So I tried installing some of the suggested fonts, bit that did nod
solve the problem.

$ qlist -I | grep media-fonts
media-fonts/arphicfonts
media-fonts/bitstream-cyberbit
media-fonts/cantarell
media-fonts/corefonts
media-fonts/dejavu
media-fonts/droid
media-fonts/encodings
media-fonts/font-alias
media-fonts/font-bh-ttf
media-fonts/font-bh-type1
media-fonts/font-daewoo-misc
media-fonts/font-isas-misc
media-fonts/font-misc-misc
media-fonts/font-util
media-fonts/liberation-fonts
media-fonts/libertine-ttf
media-fonts/terminus-font
media-fonts/ttf-bitstream-vera
media-fonts/unifont
media-fonts/urw-fonts

Fonts under linux are still a little bit of a mystery to me to be
honest. So I hope one of you guys could help me out.

Oh, I use GNOME3 (3.4.x from the overlay) if it's relevant. And yes,
except for some small details, I like my GNOME3:)

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Re: [gentoo-user] Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[Yohan Pereira]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 01:01:15PM +0200, Michael Hampicke wrote:
> I've been having this problem for a while, but I never bothered to
> really look into it, but now, I want to do something about it.
> 
> Thing is, when I view messages in Thunderbird - I use TB13 - that are
> encoded in GB2312 and have chinese characters in them, the font looks
> rather ugly. Unicode messages with or without chinese characters look
> much better. I attached a screenshot for you to see what I mean.

Hi,
  Haven't used thunderbird or gnome3. Don't know much about emails either.
But I recently started using mutt and hence noticed that the difference between
the 2 messages in your screen-shot is that The OP's mail(the one that looks weird) 
contains 2 parts one plain text part and one html part whereas the reply 
(which looks normal) has only a plain text part. 

Maybe thunderbird has an option to use a particular font when rendering emails 
that contain html? 

-- 

- Yohan Pereira

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference
between a mermaid and a seal.
                -- Mark Twain

Re: [gentoo-user] Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[Michael Hampicke]

Am 18.06.2012 16:03, schrieb Yohan Pereira:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 01:01:15PM +0200, Michael Hampicke wrote:
>> I've been having this problem for a while, but I never bothered to
>> really look into it, but now, I want to do something about it.
>>
>> Thing is, when I view messages in Thunderbird - I use TB13 - that are
>> encoded in GB2312 and have chinese characters in them, the font looks
>> rather ugly. Unicode messages with or without chinese characters look
>> much better. I attached a screenshot for you to see what I mean.
> 
> Hi,
>   Haven't used thunderbird or gnome3. Don't know much about emails either.
> But I recently started using mutt and hence noticed that the difference between
> the 2 messages in your screen-shot is that The OP's mail(the one that looks weird) 
> contains 2 parts one plain text part and one html part whereas the reply 
> (which looks normal) has only a plain text part. 
> 
> Maybe thunderbird has an option to use a particular font when rendering emails 
> that contain html? 
> 

Good idea, but that should not be the issue, because I told Thunderbird
to only show plain text messages and not the Html part (in multipart
messages)

[gentoo-user] Re: Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[walt]

On 06/18/2012 04:01 AM, Michael Hampicke wrote:
> Thing is, when I view messages in Thunderbird - I use TB13 - that are
> encoded in GB2312 and have chinese characters in them, the font looks
> rather ugly. Unicode messages with or without chinese characters look
> much better. I attached a screenshot for you to see what I mean.

I've never noticed until now that in the tb preferences dialog, in
the Display tab, there is an 'Advanced' button next to 'Fonts'.

That Advanced dialog offers to let you select different fonts for
'Western', 'Japanese', 'Chinese', etc.  You might try changing some
of those settings as an experiment.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[Michael Hampicke]

Am 18.06.2012 16:15, schrieb walt:
> On 06/18/2012 04:01 AM, Michael Hampicke wrote:
>> Thing is, when I view messages in Thunderbird - I use TB13 - that are
>> encoded in GB2312 and have chinese characters in them, the font looks
>> rather ugly. Unicode messages with or without chinese characters look
>> much better. I attached a screenshot for you to see what I mean.
> 
> I've never noticed until now that in the tb preferences dialog, in
> the Display tab, there is an 'Advanced' button next to 'Fonts'.
> 
> That Advanced dialog offers to let you select different fonts for
> 'Western', 'Japanese', 'Chinese', etc.  You might try changing some
> of those settings as an experiment.
> 

Dead on! Never saw that tiny button! Just changed the font from 'Sans
Serif' to 'DejaVu Sans' for all 3 chinese languages, and now everything
looks perfectly fine.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[Alan McKinnon]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2012 16:54:14 +0200
Michael Hampicke <gentoo-user@hadt.biz> wrote:

> 
> 
> Am 18.06.2012 16:15, schrieb walt:
> > On 06/18/2012 04:01 AM, Michael Hampicke wrote:
> >> Thing is, when I view messages in Thunderbird - I use TB13 - that
> >> are encoded in GB2312 and have chinese characters in them, the
> >> font looks rather ugly. Unicode messages with or without chinese
> >> characters look much better. I attached a screenshot for you to
> >> see what I mean.
> > 
> > I've never noticed until now that in the tb preferences dialog, in
> > the Display tab, there is an 'Advanced' button next to 'Fonts'.
> > 
> > That Advanced dialog offers to let you select different fonts for
> > 'Western', 'Japanese', 'Chinese', etc.  You might try changing some
> > of those settings as an experiment.
> > 
> 
> Dead on! Never saw that tiny button! Just changed the font from 'Sans
> Serif' to 'DejaVu Sans' for all 3 chinese languages, and now
> everything looks perfectly fine.
> 

Sans Serif is not a real font, it's usually a symlink. Same with Serif
and Monospace. They are supposed to be generic things where you can
specify the default font you like of those three types.

Your Sans Serif is apparently not set, it's using what looks like
Helvetica (yuck). Use font-config to set it to DejaVu Sans instead (or
nay other decent font of your liking) and things like this won;t happen
anywhere else on your box.



-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
> Helvetica (yuck).
<SNIP>

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Helvetica/70076125?trkid=2361637

;-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Thunderbird and chinese fonts

[Alan McKinnon]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:26:15 -0700
Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Alan McKinnon
> <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote: <SNIP>
> > Helvetica (yuck).
> <SNIP>
> 
> http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Helvetica/70076125?trkid=2361637
> 
> ;-)
> 

/me no have netflix account

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com