Ubuntu font display

guess i've to live with it????

i give up, for no one wants to help me.. thanks..!!

Could this possibly help?

http://johnny.chadda.se/2007/02/27/fix-the-font-problem-in-a-recent-feisty-update/

hi johnny,
thanks but i dont hv fiesty. i hv 6.06.

Could you please describe some of those boxes?
Do they contain 4 numbers or letters?
Can you please write down a few of those number/letter sequences in your reply?
If the box looks like
           1 2
           3 4
please write it as "1234".

hi simos,
first up, thanks for trying to assist me...!!
its like this : all the characters (including numbers and alphabets) look like small boxes (empty squares). for instance, if there is a folder named "simos", i can see only 5 empty squares as the name.
this is the same case with all the menus, in the main window and all applications' title bars.
however, once i am inside any application, that application's menus look alright. for instance firefox or openoffice, i am able see what i type.. i.e, the fonts display as is. (eg: file>Tools>Options etc) infact, i am sending this msg from within ubuntu's firefox.
as you can understand, without knowing the name of any folder, or file, i cant do any work within the OS. i hv to randomly keep opening a file to see the contents inside and then work on it. ..!!
hope this explanation helps. i am ready to send u the screenshots of the problem if you may require.
thanks once again, in advance.
cheers,
vj.

I need to see how these squares look like. Can you post a screenshot of your desktop that demonstrate these squares?
To do so, populate your desktop with windows that demonstrate the issue, then press PrtSc and it will create a screenshot. Then, you can post this image on one of the popular image sharing websites (such as flickr). Of course, post the URL here.

Hi simos,

here are the links for the screenshots :

http://rapidshare.com/files/55091264/1

http://rapidshare.com/files/55091961/2.html

Thanks in advance,
Vj.

Thanks.
I can verify it shows empty boxes which indicate the absense of available fonts.
It does not make sense for the boxes to be empty, so I suspect some issues with the current locale (not being UTF-8).
It is very difficult to try to fix from here; if you can find someone locally to help you it would be much easier. There are quite a lot of steps to check.

I think your best course of action is to reinstall Ubuntu.
You can try Ubuntu 7.04 which is currently available, or you can wait until October for Ubuntu 7.10.

well, i dont know how to take a backup now since i dont hv another HDD.. since i was very happy and confident with ubuntu, i dumped all my data into it.. now i dont know what file is where since all i see is boxes, rather than names..!!! i cant even write the data to a DVD since i will not be knowing what i am writing..!! any other suggestions that you can give other than reinstall/upgrade? i fear my data would be wiped out upon reinstall/upgrade..!!

Two things to try

1) Once you start Ubuntu and you are about to login, click on the options on the bottom left and make sure that English is selected as the default language. Try it out.
2) Once in Ubuntu, open Terminal. That's
 a. Click on top left menu (Applications)
 b. Click on the first menu item (Accessories)
 c. Click on Terminal (looks like a gray monitor).
In there, type "fc-list". This will show you how many fonts you have.
If you have too few fonts or no fonts at all, then the disk error earlier wiped out the fonts. Type the following to fix

     cd
     mkdir .fonts
     cd .fonts
     wget http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/dejavu/dejavu-ttf-2.19.tar.bz2
     tar xvfj dejavu-ttf-2.19.tar.bz2

Now log out and log in.

hi simos,
on step no.1, i cant/wont see any fonts there too, since its all boxes. i am logging in usually by typing the username/password but they get displayed as boxes. i am able to login though, since the OS seems to understand what i type but it just wont display it as english.
i tried step no.2. i am able to see a huge list of fonts when i type fc-list. still went ahead with the rest of the steps and unfortunately it made no difference. :-(
i'll leave this thread open. Maybe ur steps could solve someone else' problem, but someday, someone could come up with a solution for my problem.
you've been kind enuf and patient, thank you so much. i'll still stick with ubuntu but i'll hv to go thru the reinstall/upgrade process i guess... :(

Ok. Thanks for trying out the options.

I just experienced this problem and came across this. Maybe it will help someone? Before this had happened I installed Pango. Not realizing that anything was wrong (fonts were fine in windows that were already open) I rebooted my machine and then everything was "boxes" as you described. I ssh'd into the machine and uninstalled Pango and it was back to normal.

Perhaps there was something installed [recently] that made that happen? can you undo that change?