Package: Evolution
Priority: Normal
Version: GNOME2.0.2 1.1.1
Synopsis: Font support for Japanese screwy
Bugzilla-Product: Evolution
Bugzilla-Component: Miscellaneous
Description:
Description of Problem:
This is something more likely in Gnome's domain, but hey, who knows?

Something goofed in the updates to Gnome 2 available via Red Carpet as
of 9-16-02, when I last ran the updater.  To wit, launching a Japanese
Gnome session immediately after booting *no longer* causes Evo (or
Galeon for that matter) to use Japanese menus, or fonts, or have any
means of using Kinput2 (even though checking with Gtop shows that it's
running).  Going in and using XMODIFIERS to manually force the language
and launching Evo from a terminal *does* bring in the menus in Japanese,
but the fonts for display are still locked in to the Gnome HTML display
fonts (which *don't* work for Japanese -- more on that later), and
Kinput2 is still unusable.  

In trying to use Evo with Japanese, I had run across the problem that
Evo in an English Gnome session would simply not be able to display or
input Japanese, no matter what XMODIFIER you tried to set it to. 
Trawling the help boards, many people suggested I futz with the fonts. 
However, Japanese rendering under Gnome is complicated, and Gnome's
insistence that one choose the font *encoding* as well as the name and
size severely restricts the possibilities.  Japanese uses four scripts
-- Chinese ideographs, the Roman alphabet, and two different
syllabaries, Hiragana and Katakana.  Playing with the fonts allowed me
to display the alphabet, xor the syllabaries, xor ideographs.  Not very
useful.  And Evo in an English Gnome session would not allow me to use
Kinput2, so even if I could figure out how to read Japanese mail, I
still couldn't write it.  

Through trial and error, I discovered that launching a Japanese Gnome
session, and more specifically launching a Japanese Gnome session first
thing after booting, would force Evo to use the Japanese menus, and also
to use different fonts for display -- fonts that somehow allowed full
display and input of Japanese, without any messing with XMODIFIERS.  

However, the latest Red Carpet updates seem to have goofed somewhere,
and now no program I run is able to use Japanese fonts for display in
the GUI without manually launching from a terminal with XMODIFIERS (even
though Galeon, for instance, *tries* to use Japanese [though Evo
doesn't], but is stuck using the default Gnome font [non-Japanese], and
so renders the menus as garbage.  XMODIFied Galeon is fine).  

Be that as it may, I would like someone to look into the usage of fonts
and encodings in Evo and divine why it is that Japanese is so hard to
display, and ideally to fix the problem.  

Steps to reproduce the problem:
1. Boot machine.
2. Launch Gnome (any language).
3. Launch Evo, and open any Japanese message -- instant gibberish.

Actual Results:
Japanese content does not render correctly.  Japanese 2-byte glyphs are
rendered instead using 1-byte ascii code.  

Expected Results:
Japanese content uses proper fonts, and is fully legible.  

How often does this happen?
Every time since updating with Red Carpet on 9/16/2002.  

Additional Information:
Sorry this is so convoluted, but I look forward to anything you all have
to say about it.  Thanks!


Unknown reporter: erikanderson3@yahoo.com, changed to bugbuddy-import@ximian.com.
Setting qa contact to the default for this product.
   This bug either had no qa contact or an invalid one.