Configuration of the Droid Sans Fallback font
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
fonts-android (Debian) |
Fix Released
|
Unknown
|
|||
fonts-android (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Gunnar Hjalmarsson | ||
Trusty |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Gunnar Hjalmarsson | ||
language-selector (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Gunnar Hjalmarsson | ||
Trusty |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Gunnar Hjalmarsson |
Bug Description
[Impact]
fontconfig configuration settings, aimed at making the Droid Sans Fallback font be used to render Chinese, fails sometimes in an unpredictable way. This seems to be caused by the file 65-droid-
Example problems:
* One of the AR PL UMing fonts is sometimes used instead of Droid Sans
Fallback in case of a Chinese locale.
* Buggy rendering of Chinese contents in qt apps in case of a
non-Chinese locale (bug #1334495).
* Droid Sans Fallback can't be used in Ubuntu Touch (see discussion at
bug #1346766).
[Test Case]
Since the behaviour is not always buggy, it's hard to present a proper test case. Instead I have to refer to the discussions in this bug report as well as the above mentioned bugs.
[Regression Potential]
While the fonts-droid package installs a bunch of fonts for various languages, only the Droid Sans Fallback font is used as part of Ubuntu's default font configuration. The regression risk for Chinese users is reasonably very low. There is a risk, though, that this change leads to surprise changes for individual users who make use of other fonts but Droid Sans Fallback. There is no indication that those other fonts are widely used.
[Original description]
There are currently several open issues related to the use of Droid Sans Fallback for rendering Chinese content:
* Two mixed fonts when rendering Chinese in KDE/QT apps with Droid
Sans fonts
https:/
* Droid Sans no longer preferred font for Chinese
https:/
* Chinese in Ubuntu Touch should use Heiti style sans serif font
https:/
Unlike e.g. fonts-wqy-microhei, the fonts-droid package installs a bunch of fonts, of which only one is needed for Chinese. In an attempt to sort things out I have built the fonts-android source package in my PPA with the DroidSansFallba
To test it in Trusty, you should:
* Uninstall the fonts-droid package
* Install fonts-droid-cjk and language-
at https:/
My own tests indicate that the change to language-selector due to bug #1335482 was a step in the wrong direction. With DroidSansFallba
$ LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8 fc-match -s 'sans-serif' | head -n 5
DroidSansFallba
uming.ttc: "AR PL UMing CN" "Light"
uming.ttc: "AR PL UMing HK" "Light"
ukai.ttc: "AR PL UKai CN" "Book"
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
Also, if we would take this route, it might be easier to fix a configuration that makes Droid Sans Fallback work well with qt apps. (This is pure theory/hope so far.)
Looking forward to your comments.
Changed in fonts-android (Ubuntu): | |
assignee: | nobody → Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj) |
importance: | Undecided → Medium |
status: | New → In Progress |
Changed in language-selector (Ubuntu): | |
assignee: | nobody → Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj) |
importance: | Undecided → Medium |
status: | New → In Progress |
Changed in fonts-android (Ubuntu Trusty): | |
importance: | Undecided → Medium |
status: | New → Triaged |
Changed in language-selector (Ubuntu Trusty): | |
importance: | Undecided → Medium |
status: | New → Triaged |
description: | updated |
Changed in fonts-android (Debian): | |
status: | Unknown → New |
Changed in fonts-android (Ubuntu Trusty): | |
status: | Triaged → In Progress |
assignee: | nobody → Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj) |
Changed in fonts-android (Ubuntu Trusty): | |
status: | In Progress → Fix Committed |
Changed in language-selector (Ubuntu Trusty): | |
assignee: | nobody → Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj) |
status: | Triaged → Fix Committed |
Changed in fonts-android (Debian): | |
status: | New → Unknown |
Changed in fonts-android (Debian): | |
status: | Unknown → New |
Changed in fonts-android (Debian): | |
status: | New → Fix Released |
Seems to work for me, after I installed the two packages all characters in Chinese text are displayed correctly in KDE applications, for example Kate, only using Droid.
The output of "locale" is mixed again, I am not sure if that is due to the update of language selector or because I tried several languages before to try different locales. Same goes for the language actually used, it is an weird mix of English and German even within the same application, for example the Kickoff-Menu.
/etc/default/locale is only set to LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, so I don't really know why I have that new issue, or how to change it.
As part of that, running locale gives "locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory" (in German) on top of the normal output lines, same when installing new packages.
"locale: Kann LC_ALL nicht auf die Standard-Lokale einstellen: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden de:en:zh: en "de_DE. UTF-8" de_GB.UTF- 8 "de_DE. UTF-8" de_GB.UTF- 8 "de_DE. UTF-8" de_GB.UTF- 8 de_GB.UTF- 8 de_GB.UTF- 8 de_GB.UTF- 8 ON=de_GB. UTF-8
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE=
LC_NUMERIC=
LC_TIME=de_GB.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=
LC_MONETARY=
LC_MESSAGES=
LC_PAPER=
LC_NAME=de_GB.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=
LC_TELEPHONE=
LC_MEASUREMENT=
LC_IDENTIFICATI
LC_ALL="