[nc] Mono: Style: Cyrillic Ghe Г has incorrect bottom serif and looks strange

[Данило Шеган]

The serif on the uppercase Г in Cyrillic in the monospace font seems very weird to a native Cyrillic reader such as me (for Serbian language).

Ideally the design should be changed to the same as in the Ubuntu proportional fonts, just a plain two-stroke character, suitably proportioned to fill out the monospace cell when used in runs of monospace Cyrillic.

Proposed solution:
  1. Monospace Г to have bottom serif removed
  2. Redrawn as two strokes, correctly proportioned for monospace Cyrillic usage

See also: bug 867577 (about greek Gamma).

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Same solution probably needs applying to Gamma.

In the end Amelie managed to get the lowercase 'r' to fill the space without serifs, so it should be possible here too.

Danilo: if a serif was needed to fill out the space, would a serif added to the top-right (as a downward hook) be preferable to the slab at the bottom?

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

Indeed, top-right is a very natural place for the serif if one is absolutely necessary on an otherwise sans-serif font.

[Vsevolod Velichko (torkvemada)]

As of Russian, top-right can be nice place for serif if only it wouldn't be as long as current serif — such length makes it look like an additional stroke.

[Cody Boisclair (codeman38)]

Still not fixed in 0.80 RC1. Г still has the odd bottom serif.

[Vlad (badfiles)]

Cyrillic "Г" in Ubuntu mono should have no serifs at all.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

The plan, when we get some design time at Dalton Maag, is to remove the serif from the 'Г', and stretch it to fill the space (like the 'Г' in the Ubuntu proportional).

It would be really good to get feedback for other Cyrillic letters though. As noted on:

  https://design.canonical.com/2011/09/ubuntu-monospace-beta/

The Latin has been well-tested, but the Cyrillic and Greek scripts have not been. We need a group of reliable testers, who can give feedback so that when we do come to fix these, we know if the solution works (there's no point going from bad to worse). Feedback will be needed at that stage.

[Vsevolod Velichko (torkvemada)]

Paul, I've been testing Ubuntu Mono in my terminal for a rather long time, and can confirm, that "Г" issue is the main cyrillic bug at the moment.
There's a couple of other bugs I see, but they can be considered minor in front of this one.

I'll be happy to help you with testing. Is there any strict testing and reporting guideline to give you the feedback or I should just open a new bug for any bug found?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Vsevold: Thank you! Yes, one bug per issue is best (filed here against ubuntu-font-family).

This ensures one issues is not "lost" by being buried in a separate bug report.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

PDF solution proposed solution from Amélie Bonet (see page 4, lower half).

Is this solution acceptable? Does the g look better? Does it need further widening in the monospace to fill-out the cell?

[Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)]

Г looks much better now, but I can't say anything about Ӷ (Г with descender) because I don't know how it should look like.

[Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)]

Update: Proposed Ӷ look is the same as seen in DejaVu Sans Mono, so I think it's OK.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

It looks good without the serif, but it'd be hard to tell if it needs to be wider or not without it being seen in a text using it.

[Ladislav Urošević (urosldp)]

I think it's OK now, every single solution in Amélie Bonet PDF looks clean and consistent, and mature enough to be implemented. Great work!

[Roman Yepishev (rye)]

The letter Г looks properly in the PDF, as well as Ґ (used in Ukrainian). Awesome!

[Mladen Mijatov (meaneye-rcf)]

Changes are good.

[role (role)]

I think it looks ideal now.

[Vsevolod Velichko (torkvemada)]

Yeah, "Г" looks nice now.

[Dragomir Minkovski (dejuren)]

Confirming, the new variant without serif is better. Bulgarian doesn't use Ґ and Ӷ, but IMO they look better than the old ones, especially the new Ґ, old variant doesn't look like Г at all.

[Andrei Dziahel (develop7)]

Agree, that's exactly what we're asking for

[Adnan Hodzic (fooctrl)]

AFAIC after proposition (in #13) "Г" looks great.

[Shiraaz Gabru (shiraaz)]

It seems like we have agreement that all three Ghe glyphs are now acceptable, i.e. Cyrillic letter Ghe, Cyrillic letter Ghe with descender and Cyrillic letter Ghe with upturn.

updating status to fix committed.

Shiraaz
Dalton Maag

[Kate Stewart (kate.stewart)]

This bug seems to have stalled out.

Giving this bug a priority, and flagging it to see if can find an owner and get it included before release.

[Andrei Dziahel (develop7)]

So, status is "fix committed" almost half a year ago but still no fixed packages in Precise. What can I do to fix it (as apparently nobody else wants to)?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Andrei: it needs to wait until we've got a new upstream release of the Ubuntu Font Family together. We can then hopefully SRU (Stable Release Update) that into Ubuntu 12.04 and other supported releases.

I had a couple of other emails this morning about general Ubuntu Cyrillic status. Would you be able to help with providing high-quality feedback. It has been incredibly hard to get feedback specific/exact on the Russian Cyrillic, which in turn has made it very slow to be able to fix things if it's unclear what actually needs to be improved.

[Vsevolod Velichko (torkvemada)]

Paul, I suppose that anyone would be happy to help you with this :)
As of me, feel free to drop a letter at any moment.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Torkvemada: Spasibo! I'll try and remember :)

[Andrei Dziahel (develop7)]

Paul, I'd be happy to help get rid of this issue. And I'm ready to invest some time into providing feedback, if this helps to fix this bug.

[Andrei Dziahel (develop7)]

1.5 month passed and still no feedback request. Can we have font sources at last (I'll build them either myself, either in PPA)?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Andrei: all the sources for the font are in the 'ubuntu-font-family-sources' package ("apt-get source ttf-ubuntu-font-family"). Note that neither the released source or binary have the fix to this bug; it has only been Committed, not Released.

Currently it requires various non-free tools to build those sources (in the long run, a switch to UFO as the source format should solve this).

At this point we're waiting on Dalton Maag to integrate this bug fix and do a new spin of the source package (and so the binary compiled fonts too).

[Andrei Dziahel (develop7)]

Any chance to see this issue fixed in Quantal?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Hello Andrei. No, this won't be fixed in the first release of Ubuntu 12.10, as there has been no upstream release of the Ubuntu Font Family which fixes this.

When we collectively get together an upstream release in the next few months that includes the Ghe replacement (and the other outstanding issues), the intention would be to backport/SRUe into all of the currently supported releases; including Ubuntu 12.10.

[Alex Granizo (agranizo)]

Any chance of this bug to be fixed on 14.04 LTE ?

[Alex Vykalyuk (alekzvik)]

Are there any updates? Why can't you fix this for 3 years?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Hello Alex, Г has been fixed in the 0.910-prerelease Ubuntu Mono received from Dalton Maag. This PDF should shows the Russian, Ukrainian and some other Balkan Cyrillic glyphs as they are in the 0.910-prerelease mono.

The 0.910-prelease has a number of other fixes (this is a good thing), but also some regressions introduced against the 0.89 currently in circulation (not so ideal). The regressions include glyph changes to earlier versions that had already been fixed in 0.89 and because the baseline spacing has been increased, causing document reflow.

The problem exists on how to work from the binary TTFs, and perform a three-way merge, keeping the manual hinting, backing out the regressions, but keeping bug fixes and improvements. Help, guidance and suggestions would be appreciated; we have the source, but the manual hinting and VOLT engineering is applied afterwards!

[Ladislav Urošević (urosldp)]

 I can confirm that, problem is fixed. For any further improvements, please contact Ubuntu Serbia LoCo Team for assistance.

Cheers

[ClockworkBastard (denisovnicholas)]

To make everything clear, here's the picture of a problem. In comparison with the regular style
(it's 4th in Russian)

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Clockwork: The glyph has been replaced in 0.910-prerelease (see above). 0.910 currently has other regressions that make it hard to release in its current form.

[drkwv (bl3-drkwv)]

Wow there's almost 5 years to this bug and it's still persists, now in Xenial. Does anybody know how to fix it manually?

[dlituiev (d-lituiev)]

Still persists in Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS :))
It spooked me off, I thought it is an extraterrestrial diacritic