For me the 'drops' always go "down and in" on the cards on this website so maybe it's an issue with fonts in your browser?

drquantum wrote:

That must be it.  On another one of my computers I see the right kanji when using this site AND when using others. 

On the computer from which I started this thread, there are online websites that have these kanji correct, while this one has the kanji wrong.   I guess there must be a different encoding that this site uses compared to the ones on other sites that get the kanji right.

Now to find out why.... this could take some work. 

Here's the why: Japanese specific Unicode fonts display the character in its simplified Japanese form. The same Unicode number might display it differently if it is a US English font, or if it is a simplified Mainland Chinese font, or if it is a traditional Taiwan Chinese font, or if it is a Simplified Singapore/Malay font, or if it is a traditional Macau Chinese font.

Most every font publisher now makes their fonts Unicode aware, but they do not go through and check which character is displayed for each Unicode number. They makes sure the characters in the main language for the font display correctly, and the rest just show up how they show up.

Since each website also chooses its primary language, and default font, each site may deliver the same Unicode number for a character which may look different to different visitors and different browsers. I tend to force my browser to use a Japanese font, and Japanese encoding so I get a more uniform look. Also OS X is much 'smarter' about text encoding in general than Windows is, so that too makes a difference. 'Smarter' sometimes results in garbled text, because old Windows Japanese filenames (and text on really old websites) required some hacks to display Japanese text because Japanese Windows used to not natively allow 2-byte character filenames, or long filenames of any kind, or Unicode text. SO there was an interpretation layer that was market specific: A Japanese Windows computer could read MS Office files written by an English computer, but an English WIndows computer could not even read the filenames of some MS Office files written by a Japanese Windows computer, let alone correctly display the text inside the file.

I know because I made my old vocab lists on J Windows computer, and I cannot read those files on anything but an old J Windows computer.

(Note: This site likely does not force Japanese encoding or fonts
1. because it is written in English (by a guy from Belgium!!)
2. because this site has people studying both Chinese (traditional and simplified) and Japanese

Last edited by kapalama (2011 March 26, 1:11 pm)

drquantum wrote:

The funny thing is the computer on which the site properly displays the kanji is Windows, while the one that didn't was a Linux machine....

That's not strange in the slightest. Windows comes with language support automatically these days and you have to add it manually if you want it on Linux (or use a Japanese version of Linux :p I'm sure someone's set up a version that has multilingual support, too).


I recommended reviewing using the kanji stroke order font to review.

You don't have to reboot, either. Just install some good fonts and set them to the defaults in your browser settings.

Last edited by hereticalrants (2011 March 26, 2:41 pm)

hereticalrants wrote:

drquantum wrote:

The funny thing is the computer on which the site properly displays the kanji is Windows, while the one that didn't was a Linux machine....

That's not strange in the slightest. Windows comes with language support automatically these days and you have to add it manually if you want it on Linux (or use a Japanese version of Linux :p I'm sure someone's set up a version that has multilingual support, too)..

It is at least worth pointing out that 'language support' and true Unicode support (which is at the base of the difference in character display) are vastly different concepts.

Japanese market Windows 'correctly' displayed Japanese characters back in the 90's but could not do anything with Unicode characters, and hashed up Chinese or Korean text (or any other two byte character language), because each market used its own hacks as a interpretation layer between the display text and what Windows (and IE, and the Office products) were capable of dealing with, which was basically ASCII text.

*nix (or at least OS X and Linux) have been Unicode aware since they were first written, allowing for two-byte filenames from the beginning. OS X has been completely multilingual in any document, filename, OS file since it was first released as a beta in 2000. Linux too AFAIK.

Windows only became fully able to deal with Unicode with the release of Windows 7, and the decision to not tie language capabilities to a tiered pricing system, or to MS Office. But they still regionalize the system itself, unlike OS X or Linux. I can do my base install of OS X completely in Japanese, and then with the click of a button have the entire system become English, and vice versa. Until Windows 7, nothing approaching that was available in Windows. I have not played with Windows 7 enough to know completely because I got locked out of using the version I bought, installed, and activated in the Philippines, when I came back to the US. Maybe I could switch the system to Japanese if I could only boot the computer.

JimmySeal wrote:

@kapalama
Windows 7 and Vista allow switching the environment language very easily, and having different language settings for different logins, but it requires the Ultimate version in both cases.

Vista Ultimate may have, but the lower rungs did not. I had business and it could not do it. (I got it free.)

Is the environment language similarly restricted in Windows 7?

I imagine Windows 7 Ultimate can if Vista Ultimate did, but can Windows 7 Starter edition do it?