Garbled character display in arduino ide window

I really appreciate it if someone can help me fix this. I had this problem for a long time.

It's a problem with display in the small black window (i don't know what it's called). Whenever some notifications are displayed, the characters are shifted for several characters in the alphabetical/ASCII order. For example, the "done compiling" notice

Binary sketch size: 7,020 bytes (of a 32,256 byte maximum)

would look like

?fk^ov phbq`e pfwb7 4)-/- ...and so on

I typed the garbled characters above (and I attached a screenshot) because if I copy and paste it elsewhere, it will look all fine again. But it's causing a lot of trouble especially when I'm using the serial monitor window.

It could be something related with the fonts in my Java Runtime Environment. I vaguely recall that once in another software I encountered similar problem and I solved it by changing the font. But here I don't know how I could change the font in that small black window.

I'm using Windows 7 home basic.

Could anybody give any suggestions? Thank you very much.

QQ??20130211161533.png

I get a total scramble of the entire window quite often. It goes away and isn't a problem.

In preferences what do you have the editor language set to and the operating system language?

Nick_Pyner:
I get a total scramble of the entire window quite often. It goes away and isn't a problem.

Well I do hope it's the same in my case, but it has been with me since my last installation of Windows and never goes away :astonished:

Riva:
In preferences what do you have the editor language set to and the operating system language?

The editor language in Arduino is English; the operating system language is Chinese. If I set the editor language to Chinese, the display is still garbled.

If you set them both to English does it become readable? If not then maybe someone who knows more about Java and the IDE can suggest something.

Riva:
If you set them both to English does it become readable? If not then maybe someone who knows more about Java and the IDE can suggest something.

I reinstalled the OS. Seems that if "Editor Language" is system default and the "editor font" in preference txt is the default one, the IDE works okay. Though the font looks terrible. :cold_sweat: