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I am running Firefox 52.0.2 on Arch Linux and although on the system (e.g.: in Nautilus) I have Japanese characters showing fine, in Firefox they are unreadable because all that is shown for them is this:

Japanese characters not shown properly in Firefox

This will be because I do not have the font installed which allows the showing of Hiragina, Katakana and Kanji installed for Firefox. But the problem is that I am not entirely sure about how I get this for Firefox. I tried installing the Japanese dictionary in Firefox, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

So what do I have to do and install to get them to display properly? Because in this form it is obviously very difficult to read and write them.

AdminBee
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  • I don't understand. You say `on the system I have Japanese characters showing fine`, but then `I do not have the character set installed which allows the showing of Hiragina, Katakana and Kanji`. Don't these two contradict each other? How can the characters show fine if you don't have the font installed? – Sparhawk Apr 05 '17 at 09:34
  • @Sparhawk: What I mean is that elsewhere on the system for instance the file manager shows them fine. However I have not installed anything especially for Firefox. Sorry if I didn't put it in the best way. –  Apr 05 '17 at 10:02

2 Answers2

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It should be enough to install the great noto fonts bundles:

sudo pacman -S noto-fonts-cjk noto-fonts-emoji noto-fonts

The restart firefox and you should be abe to see them. Personally, I also installed the following from AUR:

yaourt -S ttf-freefont ttf-ms-fonts ttf-linux-libertine ttf-dejavu ttf-inconsolata ttf-ubuntu-font-family

I doubt those will help for Japanese, but they do provide a respectable variety of fonts for your system.

terdon
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2

Like terdon said in their comment, noto-fonts-cjk noto-fonts-emoji and noto-fonts will usually get the job done.

If you're just trying to install Japanese characters then this wiki page, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Localization/Japanese#Fonts, is a good start.

If you want a more comprehensive font collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters, then use the noto-fonts-cjk package for a broad coverage. It's a big package, but will cover a lot of characters. Great to mix with noto-fonts.

As always, looking at Arch's wiki is a great start; in particular, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fonts.

Elijah Lynn
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jef
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  • I just had this problem and was going to suggest the Arch wiki too, specifically the one you linked, so thanks for posting this! I just had to install one of the fonts and then I had to chrome://restart (not Firefox) and the fonts showed up, a refresh did not work, had to be a restart! – Elijah Lynn Feb 12 '21 at 05:36
  • Interesting point @ElijahLynn. Thanks for the suggestion! – jef Apr 29 '22 at 16:55