Danbooru

Unable to see certain tags (e.g. ⑨) in Firefox

Posted under General

I got a new 64-bit computer several months ago, and tags like display as wide spaces on it on Firefox. It works fine in IE, as well as the Firefox title bar. Normal Japanese characters seem to work just fine. Tried messing with character encodings for the site and auto-detect, but that didn't work. Anyone happen to know what's wrong?

Updated by jasonmaivia

Weird. Can you see any of the special characters on these pages?

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/enclosed_alphanumerics.html
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/dingbats.html

Each has a different character resembling ⑨. You need a font that supports the first unicode range to see the one Danbooru uses. However, AFAIK, Windows & Mac OS X should come with a font both ranges covered.

Are you on Linux? If so, try installing the core-fonts package (or equivalent, depending on distro).

Updated

Aristocrat said:
What's the default font? A screenshot would help.

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/6964/36778696.jpg

BCI_Temp said:
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/enclosed_alphanumerics.html

I see "NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO", no others. On IE, I see everything but that one.

BCI_Temp said:
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/dingbats.html

I see "MEDIUM LEFT PARENTHESIS ORNAMENT" through "MEDIUM RIGHT CURLY BRACKET ORNAMENT". On IE, I don't see that range as well as a scattered few others (showing up as boxes), but I see the majority.

BCI_Temp said:
Are you on Linux?

No, Win7 64-bit.

Okay, so after a lot of digging, I found out that the font that usually covers this range in full on Windows -- Arial Unicode MS -- actually comes with Office, not with Windows itself.

However, this page can point you to some other fonts that cover the "enclosed alphanumerics" range:

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html

Of the free ones that cover it, I personally like the look of Quivira:
http://www.quivira-font.com/

(EDIT: On the other hand, I think specifically the 10 numbers including ⑨ are supposed to be covered by Lucida Sans, which definitely should be on your system. So I don't know what's up with that. Try installing a font that covers the full 160 character range and see if that helps.)

I'm no expert but if this was about Windows missing the necessary fonts then wouldn't displaying these characters be a problem in every browser instead of just Firefox?

I think it must be something with your Firefox installation/add-ons/etc.

You must actually have the font. Most OEM machines come with them preinstalled with the bloatware so a lot of people don't notice, but if you reinstall the OS yourself and don't install things like Adobe fonts or the fonts that came with office, this might happen. As for IE being able to display it properly even when the font is absent, I don't know.

Circled Digit Nine (U+2468) belongs to Enclosed Alphanumerics Unicode Block (as of Unicode 6.0). Quite a few fonts bundled with Windows 7 (e.g., Meiryo, MS Gothic, MS Mincho etc.) support most if not all characters of this Block. If you do have at least one of these fonts installed everything should work just fine. You may also:

1. Firefox: tinker with Options > Content > Fonts & Colors > Advanced.

2. Firefox: set your Character Encoding Auto-Detect to Universal (just in case).

3. Windows: install Service Pack 1. It contains update for Uniscribe.

Updated

RaisingK said:
http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/6964/36778696.jpg

That's weird. I'm using old software, and even I can see at least a replacement character, either as a normal or an inverted question mark, when the installed fonts don't have a particular character.

For the circled numbers, the only problem I have is that these sometimes get displayed as a composite of the number and parentheses, and it seems to be happening randomly.

Your problem is not an incorrect character encoding, as that would affect the contents of the titlebar.

rotzapajer said:
For the circled numbers, the only problem I have is that these sometimes get displayed as a composite of the number and parentheses, and it seems to be happening randomly.

This is a bug in the alias, edit the tags (you don't have to actually make a change just edit and save) and it should force the tag to transform.

Log said:
This is a bug in the alias, edit the tags (you don't have to actually make a change just edit and save) and it should force the tag to transform.

My problem is just a display problem, and it also happens outside Danbooru. It's most likely the software trying to be smart, and displaying those characters without loading a suitable font for it.

BCI_Temp said:
Okay, so after a lot of digging, I found out that the font that usually covers this range in full on Windows -- Arial Unicode MS -- actually comes with Office, not with Windows itself.

I actually have Office, I just hadn't bothered installing it. I have the font now, and... If I change my default font to that, I can see the character in the forums and in pool titles (/pool/show/###)... but I still don't see it in the address bar, the labels of tabs, or in textareas I'm typing in.

Since doing this changes how some text on some sites displays, I'll have to decide if seeing stuff like and in tags/pools/titles is worth it...

Maybe I just somehow have defective versions of Arial/Courier New/Times New Roman/Verdana...
----
EDIT:
Using the following in a userscript lets me see the characters in most places on this site:

var allElem = document.getElementsByTagName('*');
for( var i = allElem.length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
if( "TEXTAREA" != allElem.tagName )
allElem.style.fontFamily = getComputedStyle(allElem, '').fontFamily + ',"Arial Unicode MS"';

Updated

Here's something else I found. Go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Fonts > Fonts Settings.

See if the option "Hide fonts based on language settings" is turned on. If so, turn it off. That's something suggested to several other people with your problem.

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