using aakar font reboots printer

[Allan Dyer]

A user accidentally selected the aakar font for one cell of a spreadsheet containing English text. Printing the spreadsheet resulted in the printer displaying:
Rebooting...
followed by
Initializing
The result was the same for both printers tried: Samsung SL-M3820ND and HP Colour LaserJet CM1017
The spreadsheet was exported to a PDF, printing the PDF caused the same printer reboot. Opening the PDF in Libre Office Draw and printing caused the same printer reboot.
If the font was changed to Liberation Sans, the file could be printed.
A minimal Libre Office spreadsheet with the problem is attached.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

How is the above related to the fonts-gujr-extra package?

[Allan Dyer (adyer)]

Because the Aakar font is part of the fonts-gujr-extra package.
To re-phrase the problem: On certain text input, the Aakar font emits a reset command to the printer.
In contrast, other non-Latin fonts (e.g. STZhongsong) when presented with Latin characters gracefully degrade to a default Latin font. Alternatively, it could be replaced in the output by a "unknown character" symbol, there is even a Unicode code point for that: U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character. That would give a visible clue to the location of the user's mistake.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

I see; thanks for clarifying.

Those fonts are packaged by Debian, and I would think that you are more likely to find someone enough knowledgeable to respond properly to your report there. I would recommend that you try this mailing list:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-fonts/

I'll keep this bug open for tracking purposes.

[Allan Dyer (adyer)]

I re-tested in preparation for submitting the bug to Debian, and the problem has disappeared.
Something has changed in the 10 months since my report, the package is still Version: 1.0-6ubuntu0.1, but plenty of other packages on the system have been updated.
As there is no way of reproducing and investigating the root cause, I'm marking it as Invalid.