+- Gimp-Forum.net (https://www.gimp-forum.net)
+-- Forum: GIMP (https://www.gimp-forum.net/Forum-GIMP)
+--- Forum: General questions (https://www.gimp-forum.net/Forum-General-questions)
+--- Thread: Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others (/Thread-Issues-with-known-valid-characters-displaying-as-rectangles-sometimes-and-not-others)
Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others - krobins - 07-25-2019
HELP! About 4 days ago, my GIMP began displaying the characters in various part of the user interface as rectangles. It happens in popup UI windows a few other places, like in rulers, the popup descriptions for menu items and on the main splash screen while coming up. Menus and sub-menus are fine. My best guess is that it happens for any variable text. At this point GIMP is virtually unusable.
This happened when I brought up GIMP 2.10.8 after having brought it up with no problems 3-4 times a week for several months. To my knowledge I didn't update anything relevant anywhere else.
I tried cleaning up AppData\Local\fontconfig\cache. I uninstalled GIMP 2.10.8 and installed 2.10.12. No improvement.
I am running on a 64-bit Windows 7. I'm not too sophisticated. I am a GIMP user and have been for 4 trouble-free years.
Any suggestions?
Krobins
RE: Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others - Ofnuts - 07-26-2019
Either:
1) you lost a font (but in that case there are fall-back ones... at least if the UI is in English). Hardly klikely
2) Gimp is trying to use a different UI language
Re-installing won't fix anything since the problem is likely in your Gimp profile and this is kept across installations. The first thing to so is to remove your profile (by renaming it so you can copy old contents) so that Gimp creates a new one.
RE: Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others - rich2005 - 07-26-2019
Interesting that there is the same problem here with Inkscape: http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=34412
Read down a few posts and the same installation also has the same problem with Gimp. A theory that GTK is the cause.
If restoring a default Gimp profile has no effect maybe using a old pre-gimp 2.10 theme might be worth a try.
...although..have there been any Windows updates recently?
RE: Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others - krobins - 07-26-2019
(07-26-2019, 06:04 AM)kRobins Wrote: Ofnuts, I like your second suggestion, although the menu text is in English, which argues against it. I also like your article about the Gimp profile. I would like to find and remove mine, which I'm sure is there somewhere. I removed the .gimp.2.8 directory earlier, thinking that would perhaps help, but it made no difference. Then again I'm running gimp version 2.10 and I don't know if the profiles is handled differently.
Your article suggests 2 ways to locate the profile. I can't use the first way -- my installation currently displays this kind of variable data as rectangles. I searched high and low in the Gimp installation -- I found 2 'filters' directories. The first was under GIMP/2.10 and was empty. The second was buried deep in GIMP 2/lib/python2.7 and, as expected, only had python-specific files.
Are profiles handled the same in gimp 2.10.12? Any additional suggestions on how to find it?
(07-26-2019, 12:29 PM)kKobins Wrote: rich2005, Interesting indeed.
I haven't updated my windows in a very long time. It's Windows 7 so there are seldom updates.
I gave a quick look at the 2.8 downloads available. I assume so but have to ask, are all those listed in the downloads directory stable versions?
kRobins
RE: Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others - rich2005 - 07-26-2019
Your Gimp 2.10.12 profile in Windows is the folder C:\Users\"yourname"\AppData\Roaming\GIMP\2.10\ and contains the control files and the folders for your installed fonts etc.
The 2.10 folder is the one you should rename as a back up. When Gimp runs it will make a new clean default user profile, another 2.10 folder.
screenshot in Win 7 64 bit Gimp 2.10.12 - unfortunately not able to reproduce the scrambled font problem. https://i.imgur.com/TL6HbLH.jpg
Gimp 2.10 will try and migrate resources from any existing Gimp 2.8 user profile, which can cause problems but you solved that already by deleting the ..\.gimp-2.8 folder.
Gimp 2.8 installers? For Windows all here: https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.8/windows/
No real reason not to use the last version 2.8.22 https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.8/windows/gimp-2.8.22-setup.exe
RE: Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others - krobins - 07-26-2019
(07-26-2019, 08:23 PM)krobins Wrote: Well, that was interesting.
When I moved GIMP/2.10 aside and restarted GIMP, I got an unhandled exception error. I compared the partially-built 2.10 directory with the one that I set aside. The new one had not yet created the last sub-directory (GIMP/2.10/internal-data) and only 3 of the rc files (themerc, menurc, pluginrc), and tags.xml had been created.
I decided to go back and install 2.8.22. I un-installed 2.10.12 and ran the 2.8 install. When I ran it, it got to a point where I got an "the program terminated in an unusual way" error from Visual Studio. When I compared the new .gimp.2.8 folder to the old one, there was no internal-data folder in either, and only 3 of the rc files (gtcrc, themrc and menurc) weere there, along with tags.xml.
It looks like it might be having the same issue in both cases.
Not sure how to approach this now.... I'm pretty determined to get it resolved. Has anybody created a script to go through and completely clean up a GIMP installation, including all configuration, all registry values, etc? Sounds like it would be useful at a time like this....
Also, is there any other software (libraries) that GIMP depends on that some other software may have updated by some other software?
Onward!
krobins
RE: Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others - rich2005 - 07-27-2019
No updates, but you always have to ask yourself -was working earlier, not working now, what changed between times New application installed? Some changes to an existing application? I wonder where visual studio fits in this?
Quote:Not sure how to approach this now.... I'm pretty determined to get it resolved. Has anybody created a script to go through and completely clean up a GIMP installation, including all configuration, all registry values, etc? Sounds like it would be useful at a time like this....
I do not know of any ready made complete-gimp-remover for Windows. The usual after uninstalling
Delete C:\Program Files\GIMP 2 if it remains
Delete the Gimp user profiles as appropriate C:\Users\"yourname"\.gimp-2.8 / C:\Users\"yourname"\AppData\Roaming\GIMP\2.10
Then worth checking in C:\Users\"yourname"\AppData\Local - Gimp / babl / gegl folders and delete
Registry entries are another matter. Up to the installer gimp-2.10.12-setup-1.exe there were very few registry entries - a hundred or so for file associations and uninstall. The current installer gimp-2.10.12-setup-2.exe is different. Now in line with MS practice and adds much more, still concerned with file associations. Some 2000 reg entries.
I already started differencing before and after installations and as Win reg files that would remove entries or just to have a look at, this zip https://www.dropbox.com/s/g2e6nqai6fdb0pw/gimp-registry.zip?dl=0
One last thought: An alternative Gimp build. There is one from Partha http://www.partha.com that is basically an unpacker. It does use the regular Gimp user profile. Worth a try.
RE: Issues with known valid characters displaying as rectangles sometimes and not others - krobins - 08-09-2019
(07-27-2019, 09:58 AM)rich2005 Wrote: No updates, but you always have to ask yourself -was working earlier, not working now, what changed between times New application installed? Some changes to an existing application? I wonder where visual studio fits in this?
Yup, my thoughts exactly. I looked high and low for logs and other evidence that something was installed/updated behind the scenes. The only thing I could find was the Visual C compiler -- I couldn't tell if the libraries changed. The only other thing that occurred to me is that I did reboot my machine between the time everything was OK and the time it went bad, which should have no effect on this. (I seldom reboot it -- usually only once every month or two.)
Anyway, after I saw this reply, I was off my computer for a few days and had to catch up on some other stuff when I got back on. In the middle of that time, I rebooted my computer. I don't know if it's relevant, but it's the only thing that's the lease bit interesting.
Yesterday I sat down to work on this issue, and the issue was entirely gone. It's the first time I used it since I rebooted. My GIMP 2.10.12 installation, which was problematic before i was off my computer, no longer has problems. The little rectangles are gone and the text is back. I found this very interesting.
I have no ideas if the uninstalls / re-installations I did were a factor or not. As a long-time developer and kernel hacker, I HATE bugs that mysteriously appear and then later disappear! But for now, that's all I can do.