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Sudden Keyboard Malfunction

Thunderbird Språk
Matt besvarat
Arvidd
Arvidd

I recently move to a new Windows 11 computer and seemed to have done the move correctly, given that everything showed up, and I could send and receive emails.

For no apparent reason, however, the keyboard suddenly began mistyping in the message portion of the email message frame but not in the header ("To," "Subject," etc.) areas. For example, when pressed, z appears as {, y as z, h as i (but followed by a space), 6 as 7, d as e, and so on.

I tried various fixes, which didn't work, such as pressing windows key + space bar simultaneously, or left alt + space bar simultaneously, to no effect at all: nothing appeared, nothing happened. I looked in "Settings" to see if there were any other keyboards listed, which there weren't.

This is happening nowhere else, in any other application, but here, and I've never seen anything like it before. Also, I've used Thunderbird for quite awhile and never saw nor heard of anything like this.

I sure could use some help. Thanks.

I recently move to a new Windows 11 computer and seemed to have done the move correctly, given that everything showed up, and I could send and receive emails. For no apparent reason, however, the keyboard suddenly began mistyping in the message portion of the email message frame but not in the header ("To," "Subject," etc.) areas. For example, when pressed, z appears as {, y as z, h as i (but followed by a space), 6 as 7, d as e, and so on. I tried various fixes, which didn't work, such as pressing windows key + space bar simultaneously, or left alt + space bar simultaneously, to no effect at all: nothing appeared, nothing happened. I looked in "Settings" to see if there were any other keyboards listed, which there weren't. This is happening nowhere else, in any other application, but here, and I've never seen anything like it before. Also, I've used Thunderbird for quite awhile and never saw nor heard of anything like this. I sure could use some help. Thanks.

Alla svar (3)

Matt
Matt
  • Top 25 Contributor

what font is selected for the body text? Is it actually installed in Windows 11?

One of the issues that can arise with moving profile data with copy and paste is you do not get to reset operating system specific settings. It is my preferred method of moving a profile, but it does have some drawbacks. Especially for those that have customized fonts or file locations.

Arvidd
Arvidd Frågans ägare

Matt,

Thank you for responding so quickly.

It was set to use my favorite text typeface, Cooper Lt BT, but, strangely enough, what appeared was not Cooper but something more like a sort of generic Helvetica or similar. That is what was producing the gibberish even though Thunderbird's text choice had been set to Cooper---by Thunderbird (or maybe as a carryover from the other computer).

After reading what you said, I switched to another font to see what would happen---Arial---and it displayed fine. So did several others. A bunch of fonts, including Cooper Lt BT, were installed in Windows 11 from the first, given that my occupation---contract writer, editor, and communication consultant---causes me to use various fonts all the time, so I ensured that all that I had on my Windows 10 computer were installed on this new one. But so far, Cooper is the only one that is mis-displaying. Perhaps there are more.

What on earth would cause this, I wonder. And even stranger, two emails I received from Mozilla earlier today in connection with resetting my Mozilla password---one containing a one-time code and the other to announce that the new password was in effect---both appeared as normal when I saw them first, but just now, when I checked them again, the content was in the same gibberish as the compose email content area with Cooper Lt BT selected.

I guess the acute problem is solved---just changing text fonts did it---but not knowing how and why this happened is disturbing. If you have any insight about this, I'd appreciate knowing it.

On a completely separate note, if I may: With whom may one communicate about helping in a narrowly specific area of work where Thunderbird is concerned? I've tried before a couple of times, but I never really got before anyone who could offer specific direction. We all have our areas of expertise---clearly, the technical side is not mine---but there are necessities I see where someone with a different sort of skill set could help.

Thanks.

Matt
Matt
  • Top 25 Contributor

Check your legacy fonts are Unicode. Lots of older TTF packages are not and will not render properly in web situations (HTML rendering of which email is an example)

Unicode has been the default or windows since Windows XP, but Microsoft office (or perhaps just Excel) have only just made it into the non ANSI world. ANSI and ASCII require code pages, Unicode has the various language versions embedded in the package, not just US English as was the case with ANSI so the standards used are very different.

As a writer I assume you are familiar with the HTML font families and how they work when a font that is specified in not available. Basically it is not pretty and I recommend using only web safe fonts in email for that reason. Especially avoid Apple specific fonts as not all of them have useful windows and Linux fall backs in the font family. The use of web fonts can help, but not all mail clients can download them for use so they tend to be something to avoid in email as well.

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