Text is gibberish

M

Metritype

G4 Dual 500, OS 10.3.9, Entourage 2004 v. 11.2.5

I've had this problem before and cannot find my note with the solution.

I had a major system crash and had to reinstall the OS et.al. I am now
getting text in some e-mail messages that is just gibberish. (It does
not have anything to do with HTML.)

I seem to recall that it had something to do with a single specific
font that IS installed or one that IS NOT (but should be) installed.

Does anyone know the solution?
 
M

Mickey Stevens

Delete the "com.microsoft.browserfont.cache" file in ~/Library/Caches.

"~" represents your home folder, which is usually located in /Users/<Your
User>/ and is accessible by going to Go > Home in the Finder.
 
M

Metritype

Thanks. That solved part of the problem. All of the characters now
seem to be correct. But I have an accented cap S in place of almost
all of the word spaces. Any other ideas?
 
M

Metritype

The accented cap S that is appearing in place of word spaces seems to
be occurring in messages that have HTML graphics, although there are
some (like the Buy.com e-mail newsletter that appears to be all text)
that also have it. And it doesn't happen in all of the areas of the
message. As a matter of fact, even within one graphic panel of many in
a message, some of the text will be okay and some will show the
problem.

If I copy the problem text and paste it into a text file, all of it is
okay. Or if I click on "Forward," the resulting text in the new
message window is also all okay.

I would think it must be font-related but can't determine which font.

I have read several of the messages on "gibberish" and have done
various of the things like activating Arial and Verdana, and then
trashed the cache file again, all to no avail.

HELP !!!
 
M

Metritype

Feel as though I'm "talking" to myself buy, hey, maybe it will trigger
an idea in someone's mind.

Just discovered something interesting: If I copy some of the problem
text and paste it into a new message and then identify the typeface,
the characters show as Verdana and the word spaces show as Lucida
Grande. And if the text is underscored or "bolded," the word spaces
are fine -- still in Lucida Grande but show as word spaces and not
accented cap S.
 
M

Michel Bintener

Hi,

a general suggestion first: see if updating to the latest version of
Entourage 2004 (11.3.2) makes any difference.

Also, is it possible for you to test these messages on a different machine,
to see if they show that same behaviour? And it might also be interesting to
see which character encoding is being applied to your incoming messages:
when you go to Entourage>Preferences, Mail & News Preferences, "Read" tab,
which default character set is specified under the Languages section? It
might be worth playing around with these settings, i.e. changing them to
Unicode, or any other appropriate setting, such as Western European (ISO)
and see if other e-mail messages from the same sources still have these
strange characters.


Feel as though I'm "talking" to myself buy, hey, maybe it will trigger
an idea in someone's mind.

Just discovered something interesting: If I copy some of the problem
text and paste it into a new message and then identify the typeface,
the characters show as Verdana and the word spaces show as Lucida
Grande. And if the text is underscored or "bolded," the word spaces
are fine -- still in Lucida Grande but show as word spaces and not
accented cap S.
Click to expand...

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***
 
M

Metritype

Can't test on another machine but...

Already using 11.3.2. Tried changing the character set from Western
European (ISO). Made no difference. Trashed the cache again too.

Thought I had it solved last night. Seemed to be related to Font
Reserve. Didn't have the problem when I turned off Font Reserve and
relied on Font Book. Figured Font Reserve was corrupted. Uninstalled
and reinstalled it. Even went back to an older database that I knew
did not have the problem. No difference. So I downloaded a demo of
the replacement software (Suitcase Fusion), installed it, and the
problem was gone.

Was away from the machine a little while ago. Came back to the machine
and found the problem again. The only thing I can figure, at this
point, is that there's a gremlin in my Mac. (Good excuse to buy a new
mac, right?)
 
D

Diane Ross

Already using 11.3.2. Tried changing the character set from Western
European (ISO). Made no difference. Trashed the cache again too.

Thought I had it solved last night. Seemed to be related to Font
Reserve. Didn't have the problem when I turned off Font Reserve and
relied on Font Book. Figured Font Reserve was corrupted. Uninstalled
and reinstalled it. Even went back to an older database that I knew
did not have the problem. No difference. So I downloaded a demo of
the replacement software (Suitcase Fusion), installed it, and the
problem was gone.

Was away from the machine a little while ago. Came back to the machine
and found the problem again. The only thing I can figure, at this
point, is that there's a gremlin in my Mac. (Good excuse to buy a new
mac, right?)
Click to expand...

Try trashing the Font Reserve preference. If that fails, test in a new user
to eliminate your User's preferences.

Create a new User in System Preferences. Open Entourage and test the
problem. If it exists in the new user then it's a system wide problem, you
might need to do an Archive & Install of the OS, but you can try applying
the combo updater first to see if that clears the problem.

Download the combo updater from Apple and run it again rather than using
Software Update. Doing so overwrites potentially problem-causing files.
Several users have reported this fixed some odd problems they were having
with Entourage.

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/>


--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
The Entourage Blog lists the EHP as one of the top five Microsoft Entourage
resources.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
C

Chris Watson

In addition to trashing the com.microsoft.browserfont.cache, you can also
try trashing the tasmanbrowser.cache, which will be found in your user
directory>library>caches. I was experiencing the same gibberish issue with
my old Powerbook and deleting these two files solved the problem. The same
issue occurred this weekend when I migrated over to a new MacBook Pro. I
deleted both caches on the new system and the gibberish problem was fixed.
 
M

Metritype

Well, after being completely unsuccessful in resolving what I thought
was a font problem, I decided to run a test using Mail. I have found
that, when the problem messages that are downloaded to Entourage are
download to Mail, they appear absolutely fine. So I have decided it
is an Entourage problem and not a font problem.
 
D

Diane Ross

Well, after being completely unsuccessful in resolving what I thought
was a font problem, I decided to run a test using Mail. I have found
that, when the problem messages that are downloaded to Entourage are
download to Mail, they appear absolutely fine. So I have decided it
is an Entourage problem and not a font problem.
Click to expand...

Try deleting the "com.microsoft.browserfont.cache" file in
~/Library/Caches.

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
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