Comment 8 for bug 21332

The font order is specified in
/etc/fonts/fonts.conf

and specifically the section

<alias>
                <family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family>
                <family>Helvetica</family>
                <family>Arial</family>
                <family>Verdana</family>
                <family>Albany AMT</family>
                <family>Nimbus Sans L</family>
                <family>Luxi Sans</family>
                <family>Kochi Gothic</family>
                <family>AR PL KaitiM GB</family>
                <family>AR PL KaitiM Big5</family>
                <family>ＭＳ ゴシック</family>
                <family>Baekmuk Dotum</family>
                <family>SimSun</family>
                <family>FreeSans</family>
                <default><family>sans-serif</family></default>
</alias>

In a default Ubuntu Linux installation, Greek glyphs are drawn from
1. BitStream Vera Sans (very few letters, such as pi (π), omega (ω))
2. Kochi Gothic
3. AR PL KaitiM GB
4. Baekmuk Dotum
5. FreeSans
in this order.

Ubuntu-desktop specifies that the desktop font is "Sans", and through font
substitution, fontconfig chooses from what is available.
FreeSans is quite good to render Greek, though it has too low order to be used;
the asian fonts get preference.

Sadly, a minority of greek users believe that the "solution" is to install the
mscorefonts package; this happen to work because Arial, Verdana are already
early on the fontconfig list. I hope they read and understand this entry.

What is required here is to instruct fontconfig that the three Asian fonts,
1. Kochi Gothic
2. AR PL KaitiM GB
3. Baekmuk Dotum
are not suitable to display Greek, and other fonts should have a chance.

How can this be done?