Chinese glyphs shown as tofu in 0.41 dialog boxes on Windows

[Jefftong]

I have been used inkscape since 0.40. It's dialog box
can show Traditional Chinese under Windows properly.

In 0.41, all Chinese Characters in dialog box becomes
square box although Chinese characters are still
supported within graphics.

Please refer to the screenshot I took to compare with
GIMP under Traditional Chinese Windows.

http://www.tong.cc/inkscape_dialog_box.png

[Jon A. Cruz (jon-joncruz)]

This appears to be an issue with the font being used. The
number of boxes appearing correspond to the number of
Chinese glyphs being displayed in Gimp, so it probably
indicates a correct handling of the characters up to the
point they're actually displayed.

[Bug Importer (bug-importer)]

The same with hebrew locale on Win2K SP4 - square boxes.
There also seems to be a problem with handling fonts in the
application itself as it the "OK" button is grayed out on
the dialog box related to text and fonts.

[Matiphas-users (matiphas-users)]

Just to remind : Inkscape interface has recently been
translated into Chinese (simplified and traditional).

[Prokoudine (prokoudine)]

Originator: NO

Jeff, can you still reproduce it?

[Kakurady Drakenar (kakurady)]

I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but with the gtk+ that comes with Inkscape 0.45 and GIMP and XP/Vista, if the default interface font is not a Chinese font, all Chinese characters shows up as boxes with numbers "0000" in them (unlike in the screenshot where they are empty boxes). Korean characters shows up as boxes with their Unicode codepoints.

This seems to be fixed upstream as Pidgin 2.3.1 uses pango too and it displays Chinese all right. However thanks to WinSxS in Vista (which keeps old copies of DLL to avoid DLL hell), if you install Pidgin and its version of GTK+ then run Inkscape, Chinese still displays as boxes.

[walkingbeard (jack-white)]

Use the Arial Unicode MS font. Its characters are a bit clunky, but it works. I don't think Inkscape supports Unicode properly.

[Kakurady Drakenar (kakurady)]

There is no way to change the interface font, except to modify Windows' theme, which will invalidate the digital signature. Or modify gtkrc.

[jhnet3 (josephh)]

I can also workaround with some Unicode fonts and Chinese fonts. Fonts that still work (on Windows XP):
Arial Unicode MS
Lucida Sans Unicode
SimHei
SimSun

[ScislaC (scislac)]

I am changing the status on this as it's obviously not "in progress". Can anyone confirm if this is an Inkscape only issue or if GIMP & Pidgin (current releases) show the same type of problem?

[Mingye Wang (artoria2e5)]

Cannot reproduce under Windows 10, with Inkscape 0.91.

[Mingye Wang (artoria2e5)]

Cannot reproduce with GIMP 2.8.14 either. However, there is a similar case with Inkscape: tooltips popped by guides show tofus.

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Link to graphic displaying the issue is broken...

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

Likely not relevant anymore, closing.

Closed by: https://gitlab.com/ede123