Font fallback doesn't work

[Penk Chen]

Font fallback doesn't work correctly on current components:

1. Install extra fonts (Droid for example)

    apt-get install fonts-droid
    fc-cache -fv

2. Open browser app, and go to "http://tw.yahoo.com/mobile/"

3. Chinese characters doesn't display correctly ( Please see the attached screenshot )

Version number:

libqt5core5:armhf 5.0.2+dfsg1-3ubuntu1~raring1~test4
libqt5quick5:armhf 5.0.2-2ubuntu1~raring1~test3
libqt5webkit5-qmlwebkitplugin:armhf 5.0.1-0ubuntu2~raring1~test3
qtdeclarative5-ubuntu-ui-toolkit-plugin:armhf 0.1.46daily13.06.04ubuntu.unity.next-0ubuntu1
webbrowser-app 0.20daily13.06.04ubuntu.unity.next-0ubuntu1

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

It seems it’s not affecting only the browser, but the whole shell, apps and OSK.
I installed fonts-droid, and I set the default language to Chinese (zh_CN.UTF-8, in /etc/environment and /etc/default/locale), rebooted the phone, and invalid unicode characters are displayed instead of Chinese symbols.
I’d swear this used to work, I’m pretty sure I ran the same test successfully a few weeks ago to test internationalization.

[Penk Chen (penk)]

On a side note, if you set the specified font path in FontLoader, it shows.

Text {
        FontLoader { id: droid; source: "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/droid/DroidSansFallbackFull.ttf" }
        font.family: (droid.status === FontLoader.Ready) ? droid.name : ""
 text: "中文 testing"
}

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

Tested on build 159 on Galaxy Nexus and works fine. Follow these steps

1) sudo apt-get install fonts-droid
2) sudo locale-gen zh_CN.UTF-8
3) sudo vi /etc/default/local change LANG="en_US.UTF-8" to LANG="zh_CN.UTF-8"
4) sudo vi /etc/environment change LANG="zh_CN.UTF-8" and LANGUAGE="zh_CN"
5) reboot

I see proper fonts displayed in http://tw.yahoo.com/mobile/ and in the shell and apps.

[John McAleely (john.mcaleely)]

Using 160 on a Manta, I can follow the steps in #4 and see chinese looking characters in places where I have observed squares when I was trying a slightly different way of getting this to work.

However, the keyboard characters look distinctly arabic, is that currently expected? (Or do I not recognise characters for what they are...?)

[Rex Tsai (chihchun)]

The keybaord in distinctly arabic is another issue, maliit switch to arabic keyboard layout for Chinese locale. maliit need proper config to work.

[Rex Tsai (chihchun)]

Please reproduce the issue by running fc-cache again after you follow comment #4[1].

$ sudo fc-cache -f -r -s -v

It seems apt-get triggered fontconfig update it's cache before the config[2] file is in place. Please updatethe cache and reboot.

After reboot you will see the chinese word as box, it seems like qt5 fontdatabase does not handle the language fallback correctly.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-ui-toolkit/+bug/1189352/comments/4
[2] /etc/fonts/conf.d/65-droid-sans-fonts.conf

[Matt Fischer (mfisch)]

This bug still occurs as of Sept 12. Please follow the steps from Rex to repro it.

[Chris Wayne (cwayne)]

I'm no longer seeing this bug in Trusty images. Switching the locale to zh_CN and rebooting seems to 'just work' now