Browsers don't display Devanagari script correctly

[उज्ज्वल राजपूत]

In the file /etc/fonts/conf.avail/65-nonlatin.conf the "Raghindi" font family is specified for devanagari script in Serif and Sans-serif style while "Lohit Hindi" in monospace. On the other hand, the Raghindi font is not installed by default. Because of this, the web browsers including Chrome and Firefox don't display the script correctly. A lot of people struggle to correct it by manually changing the settings in the browsers and partially succeed.
The problem can be completely solved by replacing "Raghindi" in /etc/fonts/conf.avail/65-nonlatin.conf with "Lohit Hindi" or any other pre-installed font.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.10
Package: fontconfig-config 2.13.0-5ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-10.11-generic 4.18.12
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-10-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu13
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu Nov 1 07:38:12 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-10-22 (9 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" - Release amd64 (20181017.3)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: fontconfig
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
mtime.conffile..etc.fonts.conf.avail.65-nonlatin.conf: 2018-10-26T14:54:05.700607

[Rahul (rsidd120)]

+1 on this. Some ligatures are not rendered: eg, त्र is showing up as त् र (two letters) with the default Ubuntu, because of this "Raghindi" font setting. Changing it to (in my case) Noto fixes the rendering. I made the change in my home directory (.config/fontconfig/conf.d/). Please change this system setting.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

I made an attempt to address this bug via another package. The language-selector-common package installs /etc/fonts/conf.avail/64-language-selector-prefer.conf, and I added "Lohit Devanagari" (installed by default) to that file.

https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/ubuntu/+source/language-selector/commit/?id=0496ecdc

It has not been uploaded yet, and it would be great if you could confirm that the change fixes the issue in this bug.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package language-selector - 0.204

---------------
language-selector (0.204) focal; urgency=medium

  * fontconfig/64-language-selector-prefer.conf:
    - Add "Lohit Devanagari" since "Raghindi" (stated in
      65-nonlatin.conf) is not installed by default (LP: #1800965).
  * Translations from Launchpad

 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Mon, 13 Apr 2020 01:42:00 +0200

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Closing the "fontconfig (Ubuntu)" task, since I have the experience that upstream is disinclined to change /etc/fonts/conf.avail/65-nonlatin.conf at the request of a distro, and carrying patches for the purpose is inconvenient.