Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols

Pesala

The Page Displays Fine Here

Specs: AMD A10-6800K, 8 Gb on Win 10 64-bit 1809 build 17763.615 • Snapshot 2.7.1609.4 (64-bit)

Also OK on Vivaldi Stable, latest version:

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Specs: AMD A10-6800K, 8 Gb on Win 10 64-bit 1809 build 17763.615 • Stable Build 2.6.1566.49 (64-bit)

Pathduck

There are several issues with those pages, most glaringly:

Lack of language attribute on the html element.
No HTTP Content-language header sent from server.
font-family declarations in CSS for what looks like very non-standard font types ("vladarhserif"?).
Font loading through JavaScript?

Those "web developers" should take a look at:
https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-html-language-declarations

Now why those issues would show up as the error seen by the user I have no idea, as the page displays just fine here

Maybe try:

Disabling extensions one by one and see if problem goes away.
Trying a fresh profile (Settings > Address Bar > Manage profiles > Browse as guest).

DiVisici

@Gwen-Dragon
Sorry for not answering earlier!
On algaebase.org and vlada.gov.hr rendered fonts are Lucida Grande only.
Language setting is really special, region is set Croatia, but windows display and system language is EN US&UK.
EDIT: Tried reinstalling the font but everything is the same.

DiVisici

@Pathduck
Sorry for not replying earlier. The quest session with all extensions turned off still reproduces same problem.
Also, I've noticed the same thing on the work PC with Vivaldi, with both my synced profile and guest.

Pathduck

@Gwen-Dragon said in Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols:

@DiVisici Ony my Windows Vivaldi uses 'Lucida Sans Unicode'.

Same here. I found this on my system in C:\Windows\Fonts named as "l_10646.ttf".

@DiVisici

Language setting is really special, region is set Croatia, but windows display and system language is EN US&UK.

It's not really special, many people, including me, have different region settings from language settings, it should work fine.

Edit; I searched and installed the fonts from*:
https://www.wfonts.com/font/lucida-grande
Then restarted Vivaldi, and loaded the page.

Now it displays in the inspector:
Lucida Grande — Local file(48 glyphs)

*Note: Installing fonts found on the web can be a possible vector for malware, so make sure you are running anti-virus. I checked these and they seemed to be clean.

DiVisici

@Gwen-Dragon
Honestly, I have no idea if it came with regional installation or with the fonts that I am transferring between systems for years. It shouldn't matter because I redownloaded it from first google hit. And I've also reinstd. Lucida sans unicode... no change!

DiVisici

@Pathduck
Sorry I meant to write that it ISN'T really special... Yes, everything is checked by AV. And yes, I downloaded it now from the same page.
@Gwen-Dragon
Using the Croatian pack offered by windows from settings, nothing special.

DiVisici

Also in regular Vivaldi settings, these are the Default font:

Pathduck

@DiVisici said in Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols:

And yes, I downloaded it now from the same page.

I take it you installed it using the Windows Font Viewer?

Here's a couple more things to try:

Reset Windows font cache:
https://winaero.com/blog/rebuild-font-cache-windows-10/
Check your folder: c:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts\ - this is where manually installed fonts end up. Try deleting/moving any extra files from here.
On the page in question, in Vivaldi press F12 to open devtools. Select the Network tab, then reload the page (Ctrl+R). Wait until finished, then choose "Export HAR..." from the toolbar. Save this file, zip it up and attach it to a post here. I could try to load it and see if there's anything failing when getting resources. Or you could look for Status=Blocked or http errors yourself in the same page.

DiVisici

@Gwen-Dragon
I've turned Hardware acceleration off and tried Private window. No effect. I tried guest profile as Pathduck recommended, the same thing. I didn't get to fresh installing a profile because I have a lot of tabs and stuff all over the place, I will try it when I get time to clean it all up a bit.

DiVisici

@Pathduck

Reset it
Nothing out of ordinary
Says I don't have the permission to upload it here, so here is a link on mega: https://mega.nz/#!WC5VzaRR!K52p9X8-_hdMeHmrapVge2KzZYqAt3n9p-rpeowecgA

DiVisici

@Gwen-Dragon
Same thing...

Pathduck

@DiVisici said in Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols:

Says I don't have the permission to upload it here, so here is a link on mega: https://mega.nz/#!WC5VzaRR!K52p9X8-_hdMeHmrapVge2KzZYqAt3n9p-rpeowecgA

OK I checked them and they looked perfectly ordinary, no http errors or things that were blocked by extensions.

Looking again on the screenshots, they show that the headings display like they should, because they use web fonts (woff format), so this definitely indicates something is up on your machine side of things. Especially since a blank profile also showed the same symptom.

Have you reported it as a bug to Vivaldi?
https://vivaldi.com/bugreport/
Not sure how much good it would do but it's worth a shot. They rarely ask for more information though, but if you refer to this thread maybe they can figure something out from what's already been tried.

Dr.Flay

What about changing the browser from Croatian to English ?
Seems to work for people who's browser language matches the OS.

DiVisici

@Pathduck said in Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols:

Have you reported it as a bug to Vivaldi?

That was the first thing, but yeah I don't think it will have an impact.

DiVisici

@Dr-Flay
Everything on my system is English US expect word dictionary and keyoard being bilingual.

DiVisici

@Gwen-Dragon said in Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols:

clear browser cache

No effect.

@Gwen-Dragon said in Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols:

Can you update your GPU driver

Currently downloading it even though the Dell, Intel and Nvidia update software says it's all up to date. It will take some time though, the network is very slow and overstuffed...

@Gwen-Dragon said in Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols:

deactivate Hardware acceleration

Did it yesterday, nothing...

@Gwen-Dragon said in Corruption of text on certain pages, all letters displayed as a few types of symbols:

override a GPU blocking

Again, no effect...

Gaëlle

@DiVisici sorry for all the trouble and thank you so much for not giving up on us and being so patient to try all the tricks we're throwing at you. Another user reported a similar issue and I'm still waiting for his reply to find out where the problem lies. But you've been way further than him already. Would you please share the VB-number you received when reporting the issue, so I can follow it up please?
Again thank you, I hope we can come back to you with better news very soon.

DiVisici

@Gwen-Dragon
I'll look into it and notify you about it, thanks a lot!

Gaëlle

@DiVisici just in case some of these links contain some tips you've already tried (such as the softpedia link about disabling the hardware acceleration which you did already and didn't help unfortunately).
If one of the tricks mentioned in these links worked for you, please let us know which one so we can learn from it as well.