Poll time!

[solarbird]

The Windows box in the office has Windows XP Home on it. Windows XP Home doesn't let you install language packs, so when I look at my own LJ on that machine, instead of seeing the journal title (ソラバドのほん), I see an annoying series of little boxes. These annoy me.

My journal also has a subtitle (Life in the Convergence Zone) which I like. I'm considering swapping them, just to lose the annoying little boxes. But I'm curious about how common this problem is, so I'm asking you lot.

[ETA: If you see a series of question marks (???????) then that's the same as seeing boxes, only with question marks.]

[Poll #737963]

Comments

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Oh huh, ut now that I've *said* I don't see the subtitle, looking at the userinfo AGAIN I do see it. I swear I didn't before answering the poll...

[solarbird]

Yeah, the subtitle is only in the userinfo.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but my brain was *convinced* it wasn't there the first time I looked at the userinfo. Perhaps that's a sign it's bedtime.

[bjorker.livejournal.com]

Wait. I'm confused. So it's *supposed* to be multiple question marks, or not? Because that's what I see.

[solarbird]

No, it's not. I thought people who didn't get the characters got boxes because that's what I've seen. Foo.

That's strange.

[vampirekiss.livejournal.com]

I have Windows XP Home and I can see your title just fine. As a matter of fact, I had just done a clean install of WinXP Home and this entry of yours reminded me to put the language pack back in.

All you have to do is go to Control Panel, choose Regional and Language Options, and then under the Languages tab there check the box marked "Install files for East Asian Languages". It'll give you a warning of needing 230MB space on your drive for this. If you give it the OK it'll install it for you and then once you restart you'll see the characters just fine.

Maybe that's particular to my configuration though, but I'm just sharing in the off chance it helps; it's kind of hidden in an obscure and weird place. :)

Re: That's strange.

[solarbird]

Interesting. That's greyed out for me, or was when I tried to set it.

Hmmmmmmm.

Re: That's strange.

[vampirekiss.livejournal.com]

Ooh. The plot thickens. :)

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

Um, I see the Japanese of your title and I'm running Win XP Home. :)

[solarbird]

A few people have said they're on XP home and see it. The person who told me how to enable East Asian languages was able to use an option that was (when I checked) greyed out for me.

Perhaps when I have time I will reinstall XP from scratch on that box.

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Maybe a preinstalled version that skipped the language pack files to save space?

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Technically, aren't you in a subduction zone? ;-)

[solarbird]

That too. ^_^

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

The Japanese shows up fine on my XP Home laptop as well as the Linux/Konqueror box.

[gazerwolf.livejournal.com]

Shows fine for me and I don't recall installing any language packs.

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

i get the Japanese from 'here' (Kubuntu Linux 5.10 w/ Mozilla 1.7.13) but question marks in Mozilla 1.7.13 via my WinXP Pro virtual machine.