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Topic: Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist (Read 5806 times) previous topic - next topic
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Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

I have noticed that special characters (like a heart, chinese letters) have turned into boxes instead of characters. I have no clue how to solve this. Does anybody have an idea what I could do?

Thanks in advance.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #1
You are not using a font capable of showing the characters. What font are you using? Might be nice to know what version of foobar2000 you are using. What OS? Or anything else you can think of to help others provide you help

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #2
Also, what kind of playlist items are you talking about? Audio files? Cue sheets?

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #3
Another possibility is that the tags are written in a codepage that is not Unicode.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #4
I am using foobar2000 v.1.1.9
Windows 7
The font is Tahoma and it is the tag in the MP3-file so everywhere in foobar is where the boxes in the titles show up.

The thing is that it all worked fine until I noticed this the other day.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #5
There is another problem which causes this. The exact nature of the problem is unknown, but the symptom is that automatic font substitution stops working, and the only known fix is to log out of your Windows account and then log back in. It may be related to installing new fonts.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #6
I am a Columns UI user (alternative user interface),
and in my foobar2000 layout, these unwanted boxes only appear in the Default User Interface native components
such as the Media Library Search window and Playlist Search window and other DUI pop-up windows.

More specifically,
My display scripts for DUI windows require handling of blank lines and large chunks of white space in multi-line tag fields such as %comment%,
and if an exotic font such as PT Sans is used then the boxes show; with more common fonts the problem may not show.

In my experience, Columns UI and its native components never mistakenly draws these boxes, no matter which font is used.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #7
This hasn't happened to me in a long time, but I've experienced it before - it's a Windows(7)-wide issue, not just foobar2000 (Columns UI vs Default UI has nothing to do with it).  My only fix at the time was to keep restarting Windows until the characters showed up again (specifically, Korean characters).

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #8
^i have the same problem. sometimes my rating stars show up as boxes and i have to reboot to fix it.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #9
Thanks for the replys.

I rebooted after updating windows and the problem were solved, only for a while though. So I suspect it was an Windows 7-issue.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #10
Reboot is unnecessary, you just need to log out and back in. Possibly all accounts, if multiple users are logged in.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #11
I've just experienced this in Win7 too. Anyone know of a solution?

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #12
I heard this is somehow related to google chrome and running a non-asian locale (yes, it affects the whole PC). One solution was to put a file with an asian character in the filename on the desktop.

I can't really verify it since I'm running Japanese locale, and so far I had no problems with the characters.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #13
I heard this is somehow related to google chrome and running a non-asian locale (yes, it affects the whole PC). One solution was to put a file with an asian character in the filename on the desktop.

I can't really verify it since I'm running Japanese locale, and so far I had no problems with the characters.


Thanks for the reply. I'm certainly running Win7 & Chrome but I don't quite understand your solution 'put a file with an asian character in the filename on the desktop'?

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #14
For example: create a file named 星.txt on your desktop.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #15
(1) Create/find a file whose name contains at least one east Asian character. (2) Put it on your desktop.

I cannot recall whether the phenomenon mentioned by ChronoSphere was the same or not, but considering how easy this is, you might as well try it.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #16
Thanks guys!

A fine file named 星.txt now has pride of place on my desktop.

Keep you posted, or not

Now to check out what the symbol means

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #17
Following a Windows 7 -64 reinstall and after spending two days researching and trying zillions of fixes and scripts to have my star ratings displayed correctly again, I feel compelled to add my input to help fellow sufferers. This is what worked for me :
1) Used quicktag 2) got rid of foo_count 3) YES, UNINSTALLED FULLY CHROME by Revo Uninstaller 4) Cleaned everything by CC cleaner 5) YES, SAVED A CHINESE NAMED FILE ON DESKTOP( this strangely seems to be indispensable - mine is 怕别人说他醉了)  6) used $if(%rating%,$repeat(♥,%rating%),o) with shortcuts assigned.  After this procedure symbols (and Greek characters) were miraculously displayed correctly with every font I tried.  I cannot explain this but my feeling is removing Chrome did the trick.

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #18
There is a global limit to GDI handles. Exhausting that limit tends to break the automatic font substitution system used by applications like foobar2000, which rely on the operating system to do it for them. The only relief usually comes at the cost of logging out of all accounts on the machine and logging back in again. Assuming you can't use the Task Manager to track down whichever applications are using the most handles and shut them down immediately.

 

Boxes instead of special charcters in the titles in my playlist

Reply #19
How funny to imagine people all over the world placing file named like 星.txt on the Desktop.
Even if it is a purely technical workaround, looks more like a lucky charm or voodoo magic.
Also reminds me of a special download link for China at http://www.python.org/ .