firefox/thunderbird doesn't render accented characters

[Mike Wright]

Hi all,

Currently using f10, although I can't say for certain on which version
this problem appeared.

Both firefox and thunderbird replace accented text with a
black-backgrounded question mark. If I wget these files the characters
display correctly. If I save them from either of the mozilla apps the
files are saved with the replaced characters instead of the originals.
View source on firefox is useless because even the source is mangled but
with thunderbird I can see replacements such as these: =A0, =B9, =E6.
Just in case those get mangled they are "equal-sign capital A zero",
"equal-sign capital B nine", "equal-sign capital E six".

I've tried setting character encoding to utf-8, utf-16, iso-8859-1,
iso-8859-15, windows-1252 with no effect.

This is particularly horrible on the mailing lists where an email will
display properly but when replied-to arrives mangled with black blotches
throughout. The longer the thread the more black appears until it
reaches a point where it is not even worth attempting to read it anymore.

Does anybody know what this is about and what I can do to remedy the
situation?

Thanks for any help,
Mike Wright

[Tim]

Post by Mike Wright
Both firefox and thunderbird replace accented text with a
black-backgrounded question mark. If I wget these files the
characters display correctly.

Have you changed the font you're using to render pages? The question
mark just indicates that it couldn't display the character, not why.
There's various reasons (misidentified character set, font doesn't have
a glyph for that character, etc.). But, usually, if it's a case of the
wrong encoding, you'll see wrong characters rather than question marks.
Generally, they'll show up because the page is fine, but you don't have
a font capable of showing the character.

You haven't said whether the problem occurs with all texts using
non-ASCII characters, or just some.

Post by Mike Wright
If I save them from either of the mozilla apps the files are saved
with the replaced characters instead of the originals. View source on
firefox is useless because even the source is mangled

It seems that Firefox, just about always, translates incoming data to
the local character set. What's your locale set to? (Type the command
"locale" into a terminal.)

Post by Mike Wright
with thunderbird I can see replacements such as these: =A0, =B9, =E6.
Just in case those get mangled they are "equal-sign capital A zero",
"equal-sign capital B nine", "equal-sign capital E six".

That's quoted-printable encoding. Mail using it can get mangled by some
servers, but I don't recall seeing that happen on here. If it's not
mangled, just present in the source code for some messages, but not in
the normal message display, then that's indicative that the messages are
fine and you have a font rendering problem. If they're showing up in
the normal message display, then that's a mangled message.

[Mike Wright]

Hi all,

Currently using f10, although I can't say for certain on which version
this problem appeared.

Both firefox and thunderbird replace accented text with a
black-backgrounded question mark. If I wget these files the characters
display correctly. If I save them from either of the mozilla apps the
files are saved with the replaced characters instead of the originals.
View source on firefox is useless because even the source is mangled but
with thunderbird I can see replacements such as these: =A0, =B9, =E6.
Just in case those get mangled they are "equal-sign capital A zero",
"equal-sign capital B nine", "equal-sign capital E six".

I've tried setting character encoding to utf-8, utf-16, iso-8859-1,
iso-8859-15, windows-1252 with no effect.

This is particularly horrible on the mailing lists where an email will
display properly but when replied-to arrives mangled with black blotches
throughout. The longer the thread the more black appears until it
reaches a point where it is not even worth attempting to read it anymore.

Does anybody know what this is about and what I can do to remedy the
situation?

Thanks for any help,
Mike Wright

[Tim]

Post by Mike Wright
Both firefox and thunderbird replace accented text with a
black-backgrounded question mark. If I wget these files the
characters display correctly.

Have you changed the font you're using to render pages? The question
mark just indicates that it couldn't display the character, not why.
There's various reasons (misidentified character set, font doesn't have
a glyph for that character, etc.). But, usually, if it's a case of the
wrong encoding, you'll see wrong characters rather than question marks.
Generally, they'll show up because the page is fine, but you don't have
a font capable of showing the character.

You haven't said whether the problem occurs with all texts using
non-ASCII characters, or just some.

Post by Mike Wright
If I save them from either of the mozilla apps the files are saved
with the replaced characters instead of the originals. View source on
firefox is useless because even the source is mangled

It seems that Firefox, just about always, translates incoming data to
the local character set. What's your locale set to? (Type the command
"locale" into a terminal.)

Post by Mike Wright
with thunderbird I can see replacements such as these: =A0, =B9, =E6.
Just in case those get mangled they are "equal-sign capital A zero",
"equal-sign capital B nine", "equal-sign capital E six".

That's quoted-printable encoding. Mail using it can get mangled by some
servers, but I don't recall seeing that happen on here. If it's not
mangled, just present in the source code for some messages, but not in
the normal message display, then that's indicative that the messages are
fine and you have a font rendering problem. If they're showing up in
the normal message display, then that's a mangled message.