Spotlight Characters: Apps display in Kanji or Chinese

Question

Spotlight Characters: Apps display in Kanji or Chinese

Trying to find an application using Snow Leopard results in the right icon being displayed next to the name but the name is in Chinese (Or Kanji) or something like that. All other spotlight list items are in English!

Any thoughts anyone?

Thanks

James

iMac Intel 2.4GHz 4Gb, Mac OS X (10.6), Time Capsule, Lexmark C530dn

Posted on Aug 28, 2009 2:34 PM

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Answer 1

F430

Level 1

33 points

Aug 28, 2009 7:02 PM in response to James Blandford-Baker

It's happening to me too. I did open up FontBook and resolved all the duplicate fonts but they still show up that way.

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Answer 2

F430

Level 1

33 points

Aug 28, 2009 7:08 PM in response to F430

It seems that spotlight is showing the app results in English now. The only thing I did was to fix the duplicate fonts and try searching several times and I could see the initial result come in Chinese and then heal itself.

Everything seems to be fine now.

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Answer 3

Aug 29, 2009 4:46 AM in response to James Blandford-Baker

James, are you from Cambridge, Mass, or Cambridge, UK? (Both lovely places, btw.) Some other user reported that British English was not recognised by some applications in Snow Leopard, so you need to have (US) "English" as well high up in the list of Languages in System Preferences.

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Answer 4

Aug 29, 2009 4:48 AM in response to James Blandford-Baker

That's helpful though it hasn't solved the issue in my case. It seems that the only applications that display with the Kanji (or whatever) fonts are Apple's own and not all of them. (Grab shows in Kanji but Font Book shows in English, for example). Opening Font Book results in a window showing 'Font Files missing!' with a long list of fonts that it says it can't display because they aren't where they should be but in fact they do display though some seemed scrambled (so Arial showed up the Arial Hebrew font for instance).

Any more thoughts anyone? I think SN does have a serious Font issue of some sort...

Thanks

James

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Answer 5

Aug 29, 2009 5:00 AM in response to James Blandford-Baker

Thanks Magnus. I'm in Cambridge, England (and very nice it is too!). I've tried your solution but that hasn't made any difference. I notice too that Airport Utility shows up in the spotlight list as 'AirMac' followed by some Kanji characters (ie English and Kanji mixed in the same name). Addressbook also show up in Kanji.

Any more ideas.

Thanks for an help!

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Answer 6

Aug 30, 2009 4:55 PM in response to James Blandford-Baker

The solution seems to be that you have to have "English" in your language list not one of the English versions, ie I know have "Australian English" and "English". Neither adding US or British English fixed it.

I worked it out as I have a "clean" admin user and it worked fine, looked in the language list and "English" was in it.

It seemed to take a couple of spotlight searches before it switched the chinese characters off.

I had tried turning all the kanji type fonts off but some couldn't be turned off as they were needed by the system (?). This had no effect.

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Answer 7

Aug 30, 2009 5:00 PM in response to James Blandford-Baker

Same problem here: Spotlight functions correctly, however, when I search for a system application, it's name appears in Chinese characters. My friend, who has the same system as me, is experiencing the same anomaly.

In online forums I've scoured, users experiencing this issue seem to think it's font-conflict related, but nobody appears to be certain. I haven't heard of a single circumstance in which a user has taken specific action to remedy the problem.

I suspect this problem is very widespread, but only Spotlight users are noticing it; hence the low level of reports. Touch wood, it's not a major issue, but I like things to be right and it's going to drive me mad until I resolve it.

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Answer 8

Aug 30, 2009 5:04 PM in response to Roger Traill

Oh brilliant. So if you're British, you have to set your language to "English" and suffer system wide Americanisms or for the purposes of Spotlight, the OS will assume you're Chinese?

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Answer 9

Aug 30, 2009 5:33 PM in response to James Blandford-Baker

I just wanted to add my voice to this. British English settings, and I am having this trouble too. It also happens within finder. Certain filetypes (such as Mail, Safari Documents, Text files) are all appearing in Asian Characters.

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Answer 10

Aug 31, 2009 2:11 AM in response to James Blandford-Baker

Thanks, Roger, your solution works! Brilliant. The good news is that 'English' as opposed to 'British English' only needs to be i the list of languages, it doesn't need to be the first in the list so it makes little difference to the way the rest of the system works.

Thanks so much for working this one out. Snow Leopard is now just about perfect for me!

James

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Answer 11

Sep 1, 2009 7:41 PM in response to aboywholikesapples

Roger, you are spot on.

I apologise for ever doubting you. I followed your advice and added a RESTART, which made all the difference. Now those dreadful symbols, which made me hate the Chinese have gone.

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Answer 12

chip.r

Level 1

38 points

Sep 4, 2009 11:58 AM in response to aboywholikesapples

For what it's worth, after upgrading to 10.6 I'm having the same problem and I have "English" set in my language list. There were three other eastern European languages set which I unchecked and I've just switched to Australian English to see if the switch back to English makes a difference. So far no luck but I have yet to try anything with my font book.

Here are some samples of what I'm seeing.

!http://img.skitch.com/20090904-kn3yk6rf9y19nnmitn7fmeitb2.jpg! !http://img.skitch.com/20090904-qjr8eyg1ybi36hwknram9s5sb3.jpg!

Thoughts?

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Answer 13

Sep 4, 2009 1:53 PM in response to James Blandford-Baker

Having the same issue here in wild west Wales. See here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136693&tstart=0

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Answer 14

Sep 4, 2009 2:01 PM in response to Roger Traill

Yes, thanks very much - that's me fixed also. What a relief - don't we all hate it when we have a glitch in the system.

Now, if only I could get a driver update for my HP laserjet...

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Answer 15

Sep 16, 2009 2:38 AM in response to Roger Traill

I'm having this issue on 10.6.1 and after changing the language settings and several restarts it hasn't changed a thing. This sort of bug is really annoying, is there any other way of stopping Kanji showing up?

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