Chrome Kanji renderings murdering my eyes: how to fix?

Question

I'm using google chrome on a Windows XP PC. There's a known bug where if your main OS language for XP is not set to Japanese, you get served CJK-unified characters by default in Chrome.

Does anyone know a workaround for this?

Answer 1

This is a long-standing, known bug with Chrome on Windows, where its fall-back font is "SimSun" (Chinese glyphs).

One way to fix it is to search for "Customize fonts" in Chrome's settings, and set the default serif and sans-serif fonts to something like MS Gothic and MS Mincho, respectively (or something nicer if you have them installed). This won't affect sites that explicitly specify a font, or set the language of their content correctly.

Answer 2

I tried to find a solution a while ago when I still used Google Chrome on Windows, but at that time I couldn't find a browser-level solution which worked (aside from overriding all fonts to use Japanese ones). Someone might post a better solution, but in the meantime, here's a quick userscript I wrote to make Japanese words/sentences use Japanese fonts on JLSE. Directions:

1. Install Tampermonkey from http://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en

2. Install this userscript by visiting https://gist.githubusercontent.com/cyphr/9200163/raw/5a6f428feb7f78f6404f89a2145fe425fcf67c5e/jlsefontoverride.user.js

---

By default, this only changes the fonts of Japanese words on JLSE, so if you want to make it work on all websites, you can:

1. Click the Tampermonkey icon in the top-right of Chrome

2. Go to "dashboard"

3. Click on "JLSE Japanese font override", and replace the lines

   // @include http://japanese.stackexchange.com/*
   // @include http://meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/*
   

   and

   jQuery("span,code,p,li,b,i,em,strong,a,div.excerpt,a.question-hyperlink h2,ruby,rb,rt").contents()
   

   with

   // @include     *
   

   and

   jQuery("a,abbr,acronym,b,big,blockquote,button,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,dfn,div,dl,dt,em,fieldset,font,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,i,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,ol,p,pre,q,s,samp,small,span,strike,strong,sub,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,tr,tt,u,ul,var").contents()
   

   then click the "save" icon.

This may break some sites however, so it's at your own risk.

---

Enjoy and please report any issues/feedback here!

Answer 3

There appears to be an app for Chrome which forcibly changes the font settings. Note the link a couple of paragraphs down for downloading the メイリオ font which isn't included on XP (although you may have already installed it at some point).

I say 'appears' because I haven't personally tested it and don't have a windows box to hand to test it on.