[SOLVED] Pi3 Cannot Display Chinese (or Foreign) Characters

[hkwow33]

I've installed the following locale:
C.UTF-8
en_HK.ISO-8859-1
en_HK.UTF-8
en_US.UTF-8
yue_HK.UTF-8
zn_HK.BIG5-HKSCS
zn_HK.UTF-8

However, chinese characters cannot be shown neither in menu nor the web browser (pls. see attachments). Any hints for the problem ??

I've been using Pi since model B+ and they are working fine with above locale.

Many thanks!

[topguy]

There is nothing in the hardware of Pi3 that would prevent it from displaying Chinese characters, so it must be cause by something not installed.

What have you installed (OS ?) and how did you install it ?

[allfox]

Greetings.

I don't use GUI on Pi so I can't give you a direct solution to this.

I think the problem is that you need a Chinese font.

It's not Pi's problem. I'm using a Chinese version Windows 10 and PuTTY to access the Pi, I could read Chinese. It's Windows who is rendering those characters. I'm not sure if the Pi itself have a Chinese font either.

You could get an open source Chinese font from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WenQuanYi

And for the Simplified Chinese, Microsoft made their own font, the Microsoft YaHei. It's really good. You could copy it from PC to Pi. However I see you are accessing a Hong Kong site, so maybe it's Traditional Chinese font you are looking for. Anyway, you could try copy some fonts from your PC.



Edit: I've searched the apt repo, there is a package named task-chinese-t whose description is:
Traditional Chinese environment
This task installs programs, data files, fonts, and
documentation that make it easier for Chinese speakers
to use Debian, using the traditional Chinese encoding.

Maybe it worth a try, install it via: sudo apt install task-chinese-t


Edit again: There is a thread about this: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=435706
It looks like the solution is installing the Droid Sans font from the Android project: sudo apt install fonts-droid

[hkwow33]

There is nothing in the hardware of Pi3 that would prevent it from displaying Chinese characters, so it must be cause by something not installed.

What have you installed (OS ?) and how did you install it ?

I downloaded the latest Raspbian from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/ and followed the normal procedure for the installation.

[hkwow33]

Greetings.

I don't use GUI on Pi so I can't give you a direct solution to this.

I think the problem is that you need a Chinese font.

It's not Pi's problem. I'm using a Chinese version Windows 10 and PuTTY to access the Pi, I could read Chinese. It's Windows who is rendering those characters. I'm not sure if the Pi itself have a Chinese font either.

You could get an open source Chinese font from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WenQuanYi

And for the Simplified Chinese, Microsoft made their own font, the Microsoft YaHei. It's really good. You could copy it from PC to Pi. However I see you are accessing a Hong Kong site, so maybe it's Traditional Chinese font you are looking for. Anyway, you could try copy some fonts from your PC.



Edit: I've searched the apt repo, there is a package named task-chinese-t whose description is:
Traditional Chinese environment
This task installs programs, data files, fonts, and
documentation that make it easier for Chinese speakers
to use Debian, using the traditional Chinese encoding.

Maybe it worth a try, install it via: sudo apt install task-chinese-t


Edit again: There is a thread about this: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=435706
It looks like the solution is installing the Droid Sans font from the Android project: sudo apt install fonts-droid

But my question is: I did the same (i.e. installed the Chinese locale) and I didn't have any Chinese character problem in previous Raspbian version (wheezy).

Anyway, I will try your suggestion.

Thanks allfox!

[hkwow33]

Problem solved after Chinese font was installed

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install fonts-arphic-uming

I believe it is also applicable to other foreign language (fonts-xxxxx).