Square Boxes in the Asian Phonetic Guide window

[alex_ps]

Hello,

I’ve an issue when using the Asian Phonetic Guide with japanese.
When the windows of the APG shows, i’ve square boxes instead of the caracters :

I have to say that I personnalized the fonts used for the japanese as the Ruby style.
I know that these square boxes means that there is some font troubles but : the problem appears when I upgraded to the last version (24.8).
Before that, the APG was running very nice.
I downgraded to the 24.2 version but, the problem still remains.
I ran in safe mode, the problem remains.
I wonder if I need to downgrade to a lower version, or if I miss something in some configuration ???

If someone has a clue, it’s welcome !

[ajlittoz]

The font used in the dialog is some LO default font. If your customisation impacted undefined codepoints in this default font, you get the “missing character glyph”.

What did you customise? Have you allocated characters in the Private Use Area?

For better diagnostic, attach a sample file (eventually attach your font – since AskLO allows only a reduced number of file types, fool it by adding .odt at end of font filename after the extension). Linux distro?

[alex_ps]

Thanks for your answer.

First of all, I’m using Windows 10.
Then, in LO Writer, I change the settings in « Tools->Options->LibreOffice Writer->Standard Font (Asian) »
For all the items, I changed the fonts for : « Hiragino Maru Gothic Pro W4 »
This font is installed on my system and works well with another (word processing) softwares.
(by the way, I don’t remember the name of the default font used by LO for japanese )

Also, I changed the Ruby Style (with a right-clic on the name in the right panel and “Edit Style”).
In this window, the preview is good, i don’t have square boxes.

I have to admit that I don’t understand the “Private Use Area” you’re telling.

Here is a small document (just one word) in which I integrated the part of the font used in the document.
APG-problem.odt (9.2 KB)

If you need the whole font file, you can get it here : Hiragino Maru Gothic ProN W4 : Download For Free, View Sample Text, Rating And More On Fontsgeek.Com
(it’s up to 10Mb, so i can’t not upload to this message)

Thanks again for your time !

[ajlittoz]

The APG dialog displays fine here but the Hiragino … font is not installed and gets substituted (no idea which because Writer UI does not report which one was used).

“Private User Area” is a series of codepoints in a Unicode font available for any custom glyphs. What is inside this area is intentionally not standardised so that special applications can stuff shapes there. The PUA is traditionally used by legacy font converters where they move upper half of old 256-character glyphs into the PUA to “ease” transition. It can also be used when you have non-standard shapes you’d like to insert like ordinary characters (as an example, an electronics drawing/simulator program could do that).

You initially mentioned you “personnalized the fonts used for the japanese as the Ruby style” (customised). I understood you changed the shapes of the glyphs which requires a font editor, which could explain the ‘missing character’ glyph if your modified shapes were allocated in the PUA or other reserved Unicode areas.

In case I misunderstood your procedure, please explain in detail.

[alex_ps]

Thank for the explanation of the “PUA”.

So to be more clear by my side, when I said I “personnalized”, it is not the meaning of customized but, changing the settings.
This way, I changed the default settings of the font used with japanese.
And for the Ruby style, this is the same: just changed default settings.

With your explanation of the “PUA” I tried this :
Finding a new version of the font → i did so and changed the settings of LO Writer with this newer version => NOK.
I tried to use another font : “Yu Mincho”, by cliking the “default” button in the settings of LO Writer => NOK.

This is pretty intriguing the fonts runs well in all the system and with others word processing softwares, the font is well displayed in the docuemnt of LO Writer, but just in this tiny window of the Asian Phonetic Guide it’s get weird…

I will try a full uninstallation of LO Writer (including the deletion of the user settings). Thanks again

[alex_ps]

Re-installation done.
I deleted the user settings folder, so all settings were reset.
But, the problem still remain…

Good thing : now, I know the default japanese font used in LO Writer: NSimSun.

I think the next step for me is to try an installation into another computer and try my personnal settings.

As you said it’s work good in yours, maybe it’s my O.S. ?

[ajlittoz]

I don’t think you’d blame the OS. I tried completely silly settings like defaulting Japanese fonts to Breitkopf Fraktur, but it still displays fine. However, Breitkopf Fraktur is very sparsely populated. In particular, there are no glyphs in the CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean) Unicode area. Therefore, ideograms are rendered in a substituted font.

[alex_ps]

Hello,

At last, I tried LO Writer on another computer, it’s running good, even with my fonts and settings.
I tried also to re-use my old version of LO on my own computer. The problem still remains.
So, I downloaded the sources to see if there was something to learn.
All is clear: the User Interface is well setted, and use standard settings.

All of this means (of course) that it’s my system or its configuration which is bad.
I wondered what was the default settings for japanese to run good and, finally, I got it :
The “Arial Unicode MS” font was missing on my OS.
I installed it and the problem was solved.
(the next font to install would have been “Noto Sans CJK”)

Thanks again for your time.