For instance, let's say I'm viewing a message whose source looks like this:
Code: Select all
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: "bleep"
Subject: html test message
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
this is an <b>html</b> encoded message.<br>
</body>
</html>
Now let's say I go to Tools > Options > Display > Fonts > Fonts..., where I can see that under "Fonts for: Western", Serif is set to Times New Roman and Sans-serif is set to Arial, and Serif is selected as the Proportional font. Now, however, if I use the pulldown for Proportional and change it to Sans-serif and then OK out of the Options dialog, what happens to the message I'm viewing? Nothing! There's no change. If I'm viewing the message in Serif, I can't get TB to display it in Sans-serif and vice versa. Same thing no matter what ISO-8859-1-encoded messages I try to view. Just for a sanity check, I tried the same using TB 1.0.6 (same profile with the same messages), and it exhibits no such weirdness.
I eventually discovered that if I go to Tools > Options > Display > Fonts > Fonts..., and under "Fonts for: Japanese", switch to either Serif or Sans-serif, this has the effect of changing the Serif/Sans-serif setting for Western Proportional (as well as Japanese Proportional). I don't mean that the Japanese fonts (MS P Mincho and MS P Gothic in my case) are applied to Western-encoded messages. Rather, it's like the Japanese font setting is acting as a master switch for the Western font setting. Whichever I select (either Serif of Sans-serif) for Japanese Proportional forces the Western Proportional to be the same (Serif or Sans-serif), regardless of what is shown in the dialog for the Western fonts.
Things I've tried:
* Multiple profiles -- no difference
* Two different WinXP machines (Home and Pro, both native Japanese XP) -- no difference
* Reinstalling TB 1.5 -- no difference
* IMAP messages and locally stored messages -- no difference
* verified in about:config the value for font.default.x-western -- no difference
* Safe Mode -- no difference
* Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat... -- no difference, but dog got scared
So, a couple questions:
1. Has anyone experienced anything remotely like this?
2. Any ideas about what might be going on here?