On Wednesday 11 December 2024 22:07:36 padota1663--- via tde-users wrote:

Hi,

can anyone help me?

Thanks

Hi,

I've been using TDE for years on Debian and Debian-based distributions and I see no such "Tofu boxes".

I'd guess this is a font problem, but I doubt we can help without any more information from your side:

I have a weird issue since I started using Q4OS back in May, and I still

haven't been able to solve it

So this *may* be a Q4OS problem. I remember from a (short) try that they did not implement a standard TDE and did not install some packages.

in some (not all) applications, instead of some kind of characters (more

specifically, emojis and italics) tofu boxes appear

It may help if you give a list of some applications that show the problem. this would at least let us test if these applications show the problem on our machines.

I already installed fonts-noto with all its dependencies

Why specifically noto? Here noto emoji seems to work, at least in LibreOffice.

Thierry

On Saturday 14 December 2024 15:51:01 padota1663--- via tde-users wrote:

Hi Thierry,

(...)

As for the applications which display the issue, Dolphin and VLC are the most notable ones, Firefox does not have this issue, for example.

Dolphin and Firefox I don't use, so I can't say.

With VLC I see no tofu box. You see them in filenames?

If so, were these files created on Linux or some other operating system? I remember having seen such things with chinese or russian file names, when bo font was available to render them.

I have quite a huge number of fonts on my machine (not that I really want them, but various software install them).

It's also not clear to me what sort of font is used by whom: trutype fonts are used by my wordprocessors, but in /usr/share/fonts there are also cMap, cmap, opentype, type1 and X11. I'd say display uses X11 but in my system I never tinkered with them. And they should not ne TDE related (in my understanding, which may be wrong!).

I have not re-read all this thread, but if the problem occurs in Q4OS + TDE, but not in Debian + TDE, then its either a Q4OS problem or linked to their implementation of TDE.

Thierry

On Saturday 14 December 2024 18:35:13 padota1663--- via tde-users wrote:

Hi Thierry,

(..)

The guys at Q4OS forum told me these exact words:

"We have performed some testing and we can confirm a bug in Trinity desktop related to UTF-8 named files. While the file names are displayed correctly in Plasma applications and desktop, the same file names shows unknown characters in Trinity apps.

OK. then could you possibly zip, gz or some other archive process one or two files that show this problem and post them here (even empty files if the problem shows only in the file name)?

I could then look if the problem happens here too.

I use UTF-8 and did not see such problem.

Thierry

On Monday 16 December 2024 01.06:48 padota1663--- via tde-users wrote:

Here is a .tar which contains the "problematic" font in the name, the files and the folder inside it also have this issue, and the same goes for some text inside one of the files: https://filebin.net/b3chfxansirq461w

Hi Padota,

I can confirm that I too see tofu boxes in TDE (snapshot2).

This machine has TDE for one user and xfce for the other, so I checked and the tar file has a readable name in xfce - so there *is* a TDE issue.

However, the filenames inside the archive (snapshot3) so show strage caracters also in xfce.

Thierry

I tested with the example you posted:

1. create a text file with file name and content with the problematic chars
2. execute file command on the file

e.g

file ~/охлюви.txt охлюви.txt: Unicode text, UTF-8 text, with very long lines (485)

Let us see what is the output

but I don't have any issues with cyrillic fonts, here is the output:

a@scatorcio:~/Scaricati$ file ~/Scaricati/охлюви.txt /home/a/Scaricati/охлюви.txt: ASCII text a@scatorcio:~/Scaricati$

I also correctly see cyrillic text displayed in the applications where I don't see "𝘙𝘪𝘰𝘮𝘢" displayed.

Hi Michele, Thank you very much for the above details.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread and on TGW to see how it progresses.

Regards

On Saturday 21 December 2024 17:34:49 padota1663--- via tde-users wrote:

Sorry Thierry,

I think you pasted some link to some screenshot in your message but somewhat they got lost, is it possible?

There were two screenshots. I Can see them in my mail on the list. Anyway, what they showed has been confirmed by others, so it's not important.

Michele Calgaro via tde-users wrote:

There is indeed a problem in TDE: Konqueror and Konsole show tofu boxes, while xfce-terminal (within the same session) shows the italics "Rioma" folder, although some of the files inside still shows some numbered tofu boxes. Windows 11 displays these ones as some "power arm" symbol.

I have created an issue on TGW to track this.

I was trying to refresh my memory today, but I couldn't, but I recall there was something around the state of UTF implemented in TDE ... could it be it was 32bit and therefor not able to show all the characters? May be the answer is hidden in TQt.

Michele Calgaro via tde-users wrote:

You have a good memory Emanoil, and yes the problem could well be in TQt Unicode support. See https://mirror.git.trinitydesktop.org/gitea/tde/tqt3/issues/162

Great thank you and Obata san ... I was off with about 16bits but I hope my memory serves me in the next 50+ years like it did in the past :)

There are still some issues with some of the parsers, but they are not related to the "tofu" boxes in this particular case.

Nevermind, I found it: https://mirror.git.trinitydesktop.org/gitea/TDE/tde/issues/218

Dan Youngquist via tde-users wrote:

There are a lot of us using TDE on Debian, and apparently none of us have the problem.  So if the Q4OS folks are being truthful with the above, it seems likely the problem is with their customized TDE.  So you might consider installing TDE from the TDE repo, and see if the problem still exists.

I have a similar problem on one of my PCs - there it mangles the names of some directories. I couldn't understand why. It is also Debian.

Years ago I was looking into some of the parsers and they need improvement especially for the reason of mangled chars.

I would not exclude this issue in TDE which may appear or not depending on circumstances we do not know.

BR

On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 14:51:01 -0000 padota1663--- via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:

I didn't know that the Q4OS Team used a non standard TDE, in fact they straight out told me it's a TDE issue, as you can read from my post in their forum, of which I left the URL.

I would guess that they didn't want to actually *say* "We have no idea what's going on here, so let's bat it upstream."

As for the applications which display the issue, Dolphin and VLC are the most notable ones, Firefox does not have this issue, for example.

Hmmm. By "Dolphin", do you mean the non-default TDE file management program, or the default KDE file management program, or the Gamecube emulator?

The reason I ask is that VLC is a QT5 or QT6 program depending on version, and two of the Dolphins are as well. That would point to some problem with QT5 or QT6, since Firefox is GTK. If it's TDE's Dolphin, that isn't the problem, though.

Does Konqueror have any problems, or is it OK?

I installed noto-fonts because many solutions that came up googling around suggested to do so.

It actually isn't bad advice, and would have fixed most common missing-glyphs problems. However, I don't think that's what you have here.

You said in one of your earlier messages that this was affecting italic text. Are you absolutely certain? That's exceptionally weird and points to a problem with the widget libraries, or fontconfig, or X font handling.

Have you changed any font settings on your system? That includes font settings in the TDE Control Center, in any other program, or any setting that's related to fontconfig.

Have you removed any fonts from your system, either by uninstalling through the package manager or just deleting their files?

Have you installed any fonts other than Noto?

Did you install the programs that are having trouble through the system package manager, or through some other method (like flatpak or compiling your own copies)?

Have you ever installed any themes or created any settings for QT5/QT6?

E. Liddell

On 12/15/24 6:23 PM, padota1663--- via tde-users wrote:

By Dolphin, I mean the file manager, which wasn't the TDE default, I set it as default as I find it highly more comfortable to use than Konqueror, I didn't mean the Gamecube emulator.

Not a solution to your issue, but worth a comment. Configuring TDE the way it was meant to be used with:

Control Center:

Peripherals->Mouse->General Single-click to open files and folders

Desktop->Window Behavior->Focus Focus Policy: Focus Follows Mouse [ ] Auto raise [ ] Delay focus [x] Click raise active window

Konqueror:

Configure tree-view in the detail pane.

With that config, I've found konqueror to be quite possibly the most elegant, efficient and capable file-manager I've used in 2+ decades of using every desktop and file-manager going.

One key point that many miss is how to select without activating/launching the file under the mouse in the details pane. The key is to click in the "Name" column to the right of the text in the empty-space (or to the right of the text in any other column).

Konqueror is so well thought out that you can accomplish more with fewer mouse-clicks or keystrokes than in any other I've found. It is a real joy to use once you understand its nuances. It truly was designed that way. To accomplish every task in the most efficient manner possible.

Dolphin didn't appear until kde 3.5 was already mature. It was a stripped-down file-manager aimed at being easier to use for new users than konqueror. It was, but it gave up a majority of what makes konqueror such a supreme file-manager.

Never installed any additional themes or created settings for QT5/QT6.

Installing the themes is the easy part, applying them to the application within TDE can be a trick. For Qt5, the too qt5ct (Qt5 config tool) works really well and you likely have a package for your distribution. It is a gui application that allows you to preview the theme and it then writes a small config file. If you are adventurous, you can modify the themes it provide to your liking without much trouble.

Sorry none of this solves your original problem completely, but consider both the use of konqueror and the Qt5ct tool to resolve some of the tangential issues raised. Good luck.

Ciao Michele,

the issue is that I don't specifically know the exact font which causes this issue; moreover, as I just told Thierry, this doesn't happen universally, so this leads me to think it's not a fonts issue, but rather some kind of bug elsewhere.

The only solution I came up with is installing every single fonts package in the .deb repos, but that means hogging up several gigabytes of drive space without the certainty of solving the issue, so for now I set that aside.

Sorry if I ask but what is TGW? Do you mean the Gitea bug reporting site? I already signed up to that site, but I don't see nowhere a button to file an issue / bug report, otherwise I'd have already opened a case, and attached the related evidence, just like I did in the Q4OS forum.

I made a screenshot of what I see when I enter in Gitea, but I don't know how to attach it here.

Thanks

I attached a download link to my last answer to Thierry, it's a .tar file whose name contains the "bad" characters, same goes for the files and folders inside, and even the text in some of the files; if you have troubles downloading, let me know.

Regards

Hi Steve,

I just sent a download link in my last answer to Thierry, it's a .tar which name is affected; the name is: 𝘙𝘪𝘰𝘮𝘢.tar.bz2, feel free to download and test it.

Regards

Yes, it's correct, these are the letters I expect to see.

I see that an issue has been created on TGW by Michele in the meantime.

Hi deloptes,

I immediately chose, during installation, to install IT-IT UTF-8, this installed the locale alongside EN-US UTF-8, then I removed EN-US as it was causing some issues (my system crashed once, and when I reset, it reverted back to having EN-US as default, so I removed it); can this be the issue? I hope not, since, as I stated before, in Firefox everything displays correctly, in other applications like Dolphin, Konsole and VLC this isn't the case.

This is the output of locale run as root:

root@scatorcio:~# locale LANG=it_IT.UTF-8 LANGUAGE= LC_CTYPE="it_IT.UTF-8" LC_NUMERIC=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_TIME=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE="it_IT.UTF-8" LC_MONETARY=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES="it_IT.UTF-8" LC_PAPER=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_NAME=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_ADDRESS=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_TELEPHONE=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_MEASUREMENT=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=it_IT.UTF-8 LC_ALL= root@scatorcio:~#

But wait... When you said "Does it happen on native TDE apps?" you had me thinking... So I double checked, and I found that, for VLC for example, both "q4os-vlc" and "vlc" installed; the same goes for Konsole (I have "konsole-trinity" but not "konsole" installed) and Dolphin ("dolphin-trinity" instead of "dolphin"); but this is strange, 'cause also Firefox has "q4os-firefox" and "firefox" installed, and it doesn't have this issue.

Should I try installing the "pure" versions of these programs and remove the customized ones?

I use the Debonaire theme, which is the default on Q4OS, the "general" font is Noto Sans UI 9.

In the meantime, I'm gonna create a test user and change its theme and font settings, to see if the issue arises even with a new user; I'll also check the link you posted.

PS: sorry, how do I insert links, images and quotes in my messages?

Thanks

padota1663--- via tde-users wrote:

I checked the link, but in that case the system locale was different from the TDE language, which is not my case; I also created a brand new test user, it also has the same issue of tofu boxes; even changing the default theme and logging back in doesn't solve the issue, I don't know if it has to do with the customized apps, even with the new user.

What is exactly the font that you use to create this file name? It seems some kind of italic font. Can you check in kcharselect - type the name of the font, so that it loads and see how the chars are being represented