M-Strong module + Wine 8.2 = Rebellion of the Fonts (but only in some pages)?

[arraybolt3]

Welp, me again, with another font-related problem this time. Pretty sure this is a bug in Wine, not in theWord, since, for one, it doesn't happen on Windows 7, and for two, it didn't used to happen with a much older version of Wine (if my memory serves me correctly). Also, I have a workaround, and this doesn't happen on any critical pages of the M-Strong module that I know of, so it's not really that much of a problem, but I figured I that it might be helpful to report it anyway.

blocksInMStrong.jpg (171.62 KiB) Viewed 2635 times

Notice the tons of "missing" characters in the lower-left Book View in the M-Strong module. This happens regardless of my font settings (I currently have the default Book View font set to Nimbus Sans since it works well in Lubuntu, and have the M-Strong module set so that only that font is ever used - this significantly improves the module's usability on Linux, but it doesn't fix this problem, and the problem existed before doing this).

If I copy and paste the text directly from the module and into a user module, it still displays as blocks rather than text.

interestingly, though, if I paste it into LibreOffice Writer, all of the text is then readable. And if I then paste from LibreOffice Writer into a user module, I can read the text in theWord too. So somewhere along the way, Wine is apparently eating the text.

The actual dictionary entries themselves render without issues, as do most of the pages at the start of the module (the pages that render as blocks are everything from "Acknowledgements" to "A Brief History", and also everything from "Greek Pronunciation Key" to "Photo of James Strong"). I don't see this in any other module, nor do I see it in any other page of this module. This is affecting both theWord 6 and theWord 5 (or really the beta immediately after theWord 5).

I should probably file a bug in Wine, but just in case there's a better workaround than pasting things into LibreOffice, I'm checking here. I hope to eventually be able to convert the Windows 7 machine to a Linux machine since I don't have the desire nor ability to purchase a newer version of Windows and I can't legally move the Windows installation I have to another machine in the event I upgrade the current machine. I could just ignore this and take the plunge (and I would do so if it was my machine that was going to be converted), but it's my best friend's machine and I'd like to have everything set up near-perfectly before I ask her to switch over.

Operating system is Lubuntu 22.04, Wine version is 8.2 (wine-devel).

[Jeff]

I can verify this with Wine 6.22 and MX 21 (Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)), so it's not just a newer version of Wine.

Along with whatever shortcomings there are in Wine; as other modules, and other topics in that module, don't exhibit that problem, and there's nothing unusual about the fonts used in the topics that are showing squares as far as I can tell; my guess would be there is something in the module itself that is causing theWord using Wine to choke on those particular topics. Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with SQLite, and I don't know if I could read an encrypted file anyway.

I pasted into two other Windows programs running on Wine; Notepad, which came with the package when I installed Wine (this is the first use I've found for it), and another ancient Windows program Scripture Memory System for Windows, and I had no problems. So it's more than just Wine.

(theWord build 1530)

[JG]

We did have this issue reported a while back. Not sure where. Just need to download the latest Mickelson I think.

[Jeff]

According to the "Add Titles" downloader there is no new version since 1.0 3/3/2015.

I had it redownload and reinstall anyway even though it was showing no new version, and the same version came up, problem persists.

[arraybolt3]

Hmm, I re-downloaded the Mickelson's module from the official website and installed it, but it doesn't appear to be any newer (same version of 1.0, same date of 3/3/2015), and there's still blocks in the place of the normal characters.

Back when Ubuntu 16.04 was still supported, I had some ancient version of Wine (1 point something I think) that I seem to remember rendering these pages right. Maybe I'll try and make a VM with that and see what happens there.

FWIW, I did try some another possible fix (installing the Microsoft fonts and putting the Arial font in .wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts, then setting that as my default book view font) which didn't appear to have an effect.

Another thing I just tried was pasting the blocks from the M-Strong module into a user module and then typing extra stuff inside. Surprisingly, anything I type extra also appears rendered as a block! I also tried pasting both readable text and blocks into the same page of a user module - normal text appears right, blocks appear as blocks, anything typed in the readable area is readable, anything typed in the blocks appears as blocks.

I'm no expert at Unicode or other text encodings, but this is making me think maybe there's something weird going on with a byte order mark thanks to a Wine bug and the bytes are in the reverse order than what theWord or Wine expects. Could be totally wrong, but that's what I'd guess, since there's the right number of blocks (one block for each letter in the actual module, at least for the word "A C K O W L E D G E M E N T S" (sic) at the top), and other programs are able to figure out what's written. I don't know if that would explain why even things I type are able to show up as blocks, though.

Last piece of debugging help, I pasted the blocks into TotheWord, and it continued to display them as blocks rather than letters.

[therapon]

I have Nimbus Sans L which renders fine in linux applications but not in WINE. It was a default font in Ubuntu Openoffice Calc a few versions back, later changed to Liberation. Seems it is lack of support for the font in WINE that is the issue. I don't know how much traction you'd get trying to have the WINE developers fix it.

There is a list of "preserved" fonts (Gentium,Cardo,Ezra SIL,Times New Roman) in the M-Strongs module which could explain why most of the module renders properly but the rest does not.

TW 6.0.0.1530
WINE 8.2

[arraybolt3]

I noticed those preserved fonts and actually removed them from the list so that everything would render in Nimbus Sans, I don't believe it had an effect on those pages. (Also I'm using Nimbus Sans, not Nimbus Sans L.)

[mathetes]

Maybe there are multiple issues involved, but I have determined that at least one of the problems is that there is an incompatibility between Wine and the TRichView editor control. There seems to be certain fonts or characters within a font set that do not display correctly. The exact same issue with the same characters appears in other programs that use the same control.

[therapon]

Wine Wordpad and Bibleworks both render Nimbus correctly. If it is a WINE issue it's not a universal problem.

[mathetes]

Wine Wordpad and Bibleworks both render Nimbus correctly. If it is a WINE issue it's not a universal problem.

Does Wine Wordpad or Bibleworks use the TRichView editor? I know that Biblos (http://www.digrande.it/en/Biblos.Downloads.aspx) uses the TRichView control.

[therapon]

I'm pretty confident neither one do. The version of Bibleworks I have is (c) 2007 and Wordpad (write.exe) is a "native" WINE application.

[mathetes]

I'm pretty confident neither one do. The version of Bibleworks I have is (c) 2007 and Wordpad (write.exe) is a "native" WINE application.

Then that would be the reason neither one of them exhibit this particular font issue under Wine.

[therapon]

Then that would be the reason neither one of them exhibit this particular font issue under Wine.

So it would seem to be TRichView's issue with rendering the font in WINE.

[arraybolt3]

Yeah, that sounds like a for-sure Wine bug then. I guess I'll put a bug report on my todo list. Thanks to everyone for all your help, and God bless!

[therapon]

A couple further observations - the text on the pages that do not display properly is from fcharset128. On the pages I checked that do display as expected the text is from fcharset0 or fcharset177. There are a lot of glyphs not present in the Nimbus font which makes me wonder if fcharset128 is missing and that's why only empty boxes appear in TW. Something strange with the font encoding in the rtf source?