• From: California, USA
  • Registered: 2008-11-29
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Topic: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

I noticed Firefox wasnt properly displaying those languages so heres how to fix it:

sudo apt-get install language-support-fonts-ja language-support-fonts-ko language-support-fonts-zh

Simple huh?

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  • From: Lincoln, UK
  • Registered: 2008-11-20
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

Very! smile Thank you for sharing.

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  • Registered: 2009-01-22
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

Awesome, I was just wondering how to get asianic characters to display properly

  • Fiddy
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

anonymous wrote:

I noticed Firefox wasnt properly displaying those languages so heres how to fix it:

sudo apt-get install language-support-fonts-ja language-support-fonts-ko language-support-fonts-zh

Simple huh?

These are Ubuntu packages for use with #! 9.04 so to get this working on Statler (or Debian), try installing the ttf fonts directly from the repos. The following uses pvsage's list from post #11 on this thread.

sudo apt-get install ttf-arphic-uming ttf-wqy-zenhei ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-sazanami-gothic ttf-unfonts-core ttf-unfonts-extra ttf-indic-fonts ttf-tmuni ttf-dzongkha ttf-khmeros ttf-jura ttf-sinhala-lklug ttf-sil-padauk

Or if you just want Chinese:

sudo apt-get install ttf-arphic-uming ttf-wqy-zenhei

Japanese:

sudo apt-get install ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-sazanami-gothic

Korean:

sudo apt-get install ttf-unfonts

Edit: This does not get Vietnamese displaying correctly but the fonts for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are displaying correctly in Iceweasel for me as confirmed by a visit to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Multi … t_Asian%29. I can't read Vietnamese so it's not a big issue for me but if someone knows what the correct font is, please post it. smile

Last edited by Fiddy (2010-12-20 10:24:16)

  • pvsage
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

Thanks for the bump, Fiddy!

Still searching off and on for that elusive font pack for full Vietnamese support...only about 10% of that set is missing, but it's enough to be a problem.

Any Vietnamese CrunchBang users?

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  • From: Lincoln, UK
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

@pvsage, in your opinion, should the font packages mentioned in this thread be installed by default?

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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

^ Maybe the handful of fonts for East Asian support mentioned in the Wikipedia page, since there are so many computer users in those areas.  If you were to include all these Unicode font packs, including central Asian, Cyrillic, and Gothic support, that adds up to considerable bloat.

Maybe add the more obscure font packs as an option in cb-welcome?

EDIT:  The list above does not include Gothic.  Add 'ttf-mph-2b-damase' for Gothic support.  Probably not going to run across it very often though.  It also doesn't include full Coptic support.  Probably not much support for Theban and other modern neo-ciphers either.

Last edited by pvsage (2010-12-21 07:57:30)

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  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

pvsage wrote:

Maybe add the more obscure font packs as an option in cb-welcome?

That sounds sensible. I remember in the past, when I had little disk space to spare, being irritated by all the Indian fonts Ubuntu installed by default. (Of course no offence meant to speakers of those languages, but I needed other fonts.) These days I suppose fewer and fewer people are short of a few dozen megabytes of space...

Last edited by johnraff (2010-12-21 15:13:49)

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  • pvsage
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

I was actually thinking in terms of ISO size...

...but yeah, we don't want to offend those Tamil Tigers! big_smile  That was one of the character sets that gave me trouble early on.

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  • From: United States
  • Registered: 2010-12-21
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

pvsage wrote:

Maybe add the more obscure font packs as an option in cb-welcome?

I think that is a better idea than default install.  It would be easy to do but not forced on those who don't want it.  (I do want them since I view a lot of Korean websites, and wanted to say that I really appreciated this thread for directing me to the appropriate fonts.)

  • From: The Chatsubo
  • Registered: 2010-04-03
  • Posts: 1,056

Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

I installed the Japanese fonts listed above, but something seems to be not quite right. Check out this screen grab of Firefox:

http://ompldr.org/vNm8ydg/2010-12-21--1292979090_1400x1050_scrot.png

If you look in the title bar, you'll see that the Japanese characters don't seem to be displaying correctly even though they're correctly displayed in the page itself.

I suspect this might be something related to Openbox? smile

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  • From: California, USA
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

Try changing the Openbox titlebar font and see what happens.

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  • From: The Chatsubo
  • Registered: 2010-04-03
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

Ah, I knew it would be something simple that I was missing - thanks smile

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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

^ I wouldn't be surprised if just reconfiguring Openbox would have fixed the mojibake issue, assuming the font shown above is smart enough to check for Unicode character sets.

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  • From: The Chatsubo
  • Registered: 2010-04-03
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

What's the mojibake issue? neutral

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  • pvsage
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

According to Wikipedia, mojibake is the term for nonsense characters that replace what's supposed to be there if you don't have the right character encoding.  I suppose those boxes merit a different term, but I haven't been able to find a name for them.

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  • From: The Chatsubo
  • Registered: 2010-04-03
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

Ah, gotcha big_smile You really do learn something new every day!

Well, it seems my mojibake problem is sorted now, so I'm golden smile

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" Walt Whitman, 'To You'.
  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,971

Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

(It's Japanese, just fyi. Moji=letters, bake=bewitched, changed.)

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  • From: The Chatsubo
  • Registered: 2010-04-03
  • Posts: 1,056

Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

Thanks!

I'd really love to learn Japanese - haven't tried learning a new language since I was at school and really wanting to head out to Japan some time. Just don't know where to start with it all!

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" Walt Whitman, 'To You'.
  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

^Not as hard as some people make out - but different, so you can't build on what you learned from European languages too much. Pronunciation's pretty easy, grammar too. The written language is tough though. If you enjoy languages by all means go for it!

Or of course Chinese, where you'll have the extra fun of tones! smile

John
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“Good morning sir, which way up would you like your reality today?”  "As it comes, Jeeves, as it comes..."

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  • From: In my head.
  • Registered: 2011-01-12
  • Posts: 66

Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

Sorry for the necro-bump...

...but it appears that these fonts don't install during an installation even if you've chosen to install in Japanese! (I haven't tried the other languages.) Could this be fixed?

Last edited by Bananaclasic (2011-01-28 00:55:05)

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  • From: California, USA
  • Registered: 2008-11-29
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

What are you asking for exactly? You want the Debian installer to automatically install these fonts?

Reporting a bug: http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting

The Debian forums: http://forums.debian.net/

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  • pvsage
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

@Bananaclasic:  This does sound like a l10n (localization, with "10" replacing the middle 10 characters) issue; I agree with anonymous that this is probably best handled upstream...unless you've installed a standard Debian Live using the Debian Installer and it automatically pulled in Japanese font support.

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  • Registered: 2011-05-22
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Re: HOWTO: Install East Asian Language support

For future reference: I was having trouble getting the chinese font to render properly after

sudo apt-get install ttf-arphic-uming ttf-wqy-zenhei

but then I did

sudo apt-get autoremove

to clean up a bunch of things and the browser started displaying properly.