Some characters are replaced by question marks!

Question

Some characters are replaced by question marks!

All of a sudden my iMac (OS X 10.5.1 Leopard) is displaying question marks for some special characters.
For example, on internet, look up a word "pediment" in Yahoo! Dictionary ( http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/pediment)... Instead of showing the "dot" symbol to identify a syllabus break, it shows question marks as ped?i?ment, and instead of showing c with a little squiggle underneath for a word facade (within the definition of pediment), it shows fa?ade.
I did not have this problem on my iMac on Tuesday (01/29/08) morning and I have not installed anything other than the Apple updates.
I tried with FireFox and Safari, and both show the same thing. Then I went and checked my husband's iMac (OS X 10.5.1 Leopard) and it has a same problem, so I know it is not just my iMac.
Then (yes, there is more...) I started to work on my Word document and tried to insert "symbol" from insert on the Toolbar... many of my symbol fonts (Symbol, Osaka, etc) has question marks replacing special characters.

Please help! I am unable to complete my work without these special characters!!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.1), Corrupt font files from updates?

Posted on Feb 2, 2008 8:59 PM

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Answer 1

KJK555

Level 4

2,906 points

Feb 3, 2008 12:28 AM in response to pookie.pookie

in safari select View> text encoding> western (iso latin1)

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,136 points

Feb 3, 2008 5:43 AM in response to pookie.pookie

Also check Safari > Preferences > Appearance > Default Encoding and set it to Western ISO Latin 1.

The Yahoo page should make your browser do this automatically, but apparently there is something about it which is interfering with that.

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,136 points

Feb 3, 2008 6:05 AM in response to pookie.pookie

I started to work on my Word document and tried to insert "symbol" from insert on the Toolbar... many of my symbol fonts (Symbol, Osaka, etc) has question marks replacing special characters.

Regard Word, you might also want to ask here, specifying what Word version you are talking about of course:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/topics

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Answer 4

Feb 3, 2008 9:26 AM in response to KJK555

I just checked Safari settings and it is set to Western (ISO Latin 1).

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Answer 5

Feb 3, 2008 9:28 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

This one is set to Western (ISO Latin 1) as well.

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Answer 6

Feb 3, 2008 9:34 AM in response to pookie.pookie

Thanks for the tips but I think the problem lies within the fonts in iMac itself affecting all the applications. Also it is not just my iMac, but my husband's iMac as well and we have not downloaded anything but the updates from Apple. So!! It has to be something in the recent updates that changed something in my fonts or corrupted them somehow.
Anybodyelse having the same problem?

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Answer 7

Feb 3, 2008 9:53 AM in response to pookie.pookie

Well, I went to the Yahoo! Dictionary "Pediment" and it said it was set to Default which is set to Western (ISO Latin 1), so I assumed it was Western (ISO Latin 1). But when I click on Western (ISO Latin 1), the pages appear what it's supposed to look like with special characters... What does this mean?
I reset all the settings; I chose something else as default, quit Safari, opened it and chose Western (ISO Latin 1) as a default to see if it changes anything... No change. It says my default is Western (ISO Latin 1), but it seems not.
I am officially confused and have no clue what to do...??????!!!!!

On the bright side, at least I can get my work done, even if I have to change the encoding one page at a time... Thanks.

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,136 points

Feb 3, 2008 10:02 AM in response to pookie.pookie

There is nothing wrong with your mac or your fonts. It looks like Yahoo has put their Latin-1 page on a server configured to force all browsers to use UTF-8 encoding. The only remedy is to switch the encoding manually via View > Text Encoding in your browser.

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Answer 9

Feb 3, 2008 11:07 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hmmm.
I never thought the problem to be on Yahoo! Dictionary side, but it makes sense.
Is this mean everybody else is experiencing the same problem as I have?

I am going to write to Yahoo! and see what kind of answers I get.

Meanwhile I am going to keep this thread open.

Thanks!

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Answer 10

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,136 points

Feb 3, 2008 11:18 AM in response to pookie.pookie

Is this mean everybody else is experiencing the same problem as I have?

Yes.

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