90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf installed by ttf-indic-fonts-core does not yield an intended result

[K. Sethu]

Binary package hint: ttf-indic-fonts

About the /etc/fonts/conf.d/90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf -> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf link installed by ttf-indic-fonts-core package in Ubuntu Maverick - Beta

The file 90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf file includes the following "rejection" block :
---------------------------------------------------------------
<!-- TAM* and TSC* fonts use a custom legacy encoding and should never be picked by fontconfig -->
    <selectfont>
        <rejectfont>
            <pattern>
             <patelt name="family"><string>TAMu_Kadambri</string></patelt>
             <patelt name="family"><string>TAMu_Kalyani</string></patelt>
             <patelt name="family"><string>TAMu_Maduram</string></patelt>
             <patelt name="family"><string>TSCu_Comic</string></patelt>
             <patelt name="family"><string>TSCu_Paranar</string></patelt>
             <patelt name="family"><string>TSCu_Times</string></patelt>
            </pattern>
        </rejectfont>
    </selectfont>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As an user of Tamil interface in ta_IN locale (which is UTF-8) I welcome this goal ("TAM* and TSC* fonts use a custom legacy encoding and should never be picked by fontconfig") because for long (and still), the 65-nonlatin.conf file, for the match to Sans generic, has TSCu_Paranar font at a higher preference than Lohit Tamil.

Although the TSCu_Paranar font has Tamil glyphs (but not comprehensive), it also has Tamil glyphs for TSC encoding in upper Latin (U+0080- to U+00FF) range and many Tamil ligatures placed rather exotically in ranges such as General Punctuation symbols, Mathematical Operator symbols etc. They all do cause problems in rendering of some contents in some applications.

However the code in 90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf is not preventing fontconfig from matching TSCu_Paranar to sans-serif as dictated by 65-nonlatin.conf .

My attached screen shot displays the content of 90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf in terminal on left side and the right side of the display shows a list of Tamil fonts installed (as result of fc-list :lang=ta command) and below them the result of fc-match command for the 3 generics (Sans, Serif and Mono) for lang=ta. The results show that TSCu_Paranar (and not Lohit Tamil) is still picked for lang=ta with Sans-Serif generic and also with nondescript generic.

The 90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf or any such preventive file at higher elevation working correctly as expected would be very welcome.

If not, another solution to the issue, is to remove the preference line for TSCu_Paranar for Sans-Serif in 65-nonlatin.conf file.

K. Sethu

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: ttf-indic-fonts-core 1:0.5.10ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-19.28-generic 2.6.35.3
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-19-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Sep 4 19:43:43 2010
Dependencies:

InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Beta i386 (20100901.1)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ttf-indic-fonts