DejaVu Oblique variants not installed by default

[anonymous mouse]

In Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS, new install (well, as of a few months ago), italic/oblique variants just weren't installed by default. In some programs this resulted in text not showing, in others it resulted in those square boxes that indicate no font installed showing. The issue is in fonts-dejavu-extra which apparently doesn't exist in Ubuntu, so I've selected I don't know, even though I have a damn good idea.

The only way to fix this that I quickly found is to install the "transitional dummy package" that "can be safely removed" ttf-dejavu-extra. With this package installed, all the variants of DejaVu are installed. With it removed, the problem occurs.

This package installs the extra font DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Oblique".

I present the output of some commands to demonstrate the issue:

me@mine:~$ apt-cache policy fonts-dejavu-extra
fonts-dejavu-extra:
  Installed: 2.35-1
  Candidate: 2.35-1
  Version table:
 *** 2.35-1 500
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
me@mine:~$ fc-match -s sans-serif | grep -i dejavu
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold"
DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf.dpkg-new: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold Oblique"
DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"
DejaVuSerif.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Book"
me@mine:~$ sudo apt-get install ttf-dejavu-extra
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-4.4.0-92 linux-headers-4.4.0-92-generic
  linux-image-4.4.0-92-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-92-generic
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ttf-dejavu-extra
0 to upgrade, 1 to newly install, 0 to remove and 3 not to upgrade.
Need to get 0 B/3,176 B of archives.
After this operation, 69.6 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously unselected package ttf-dejavu-extra.
(Reading database ... 316833 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../ttf-dejavu-extra_2.35-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking ttf-dejavu-extra (2.35-1) ...
Processing triggers for fontconfig (2.11.94-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Setting up ttf-dejavu-extra (2.35-1) ...
me@mine:~$ fc-match -s sans-serif | grep -i dejavu
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold"
DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Oblique"
DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf.dpkg-new: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold Oblique"
DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"
DejaVuSerif.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Book"
me@mine:~$

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1722076/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[anonymous mouse (eeefafe)]

The actual issue appears to be in fonts-dejavu-extra, but it won't let me select that.