By default install Noto fonts for Unicode ranges not already covered by default

[Henri Sivonen]

There is currently movement towards protecting browser users from font fingerprinting. This means refusing, by default, to load user-installed fonts, which makes the set of fonts that each OS installs by default even more important than before.

Firefox bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1582687

W3C CSS WG issue:
https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/4497

Currently, Windows 10, macOS, Android, Chrome OS, and, to a lesser extent, Fedora provide broader installed-by-default Unicode coverage than Ubuntu.

Examples of living scripts that have enough active users to make it to the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_systems#List_of_writing_scripts_by_adoption but are not supported by default in Eoan include Javanese, Sundanese, Batak, Balinese, Modern Yi, Mongolian, and New Tai Lue.

Egyptian hieroglyphs is an example of a dead script the Eoan doesn't support but Windows 10, macOS, Chrome OS, and Android do support.

To remedy this with minimal disk space impact, I suggest the same approach that Apple took. Apple bundles with macOS those Noto fonts that cover scripts that were not already covered by the previous installed-by-default set of fonts on macOS. In the macOS case, the on-disk footprint of the Noto fonts that were required to take macOS to Android/Chrome OS-competitive Unicode coverage was only a couple of megabytes. (The fonts are hidden in /Library/Application Support/Apple/Fonts/Language Support/.) In the case of Ubuntu, the set of Noto fonts required to reach the Chrome OS / Android level of script coverage is a bit larger than in the macOS case but should still be manageable.

Please install, by default, those Noto fonts that provide support for scripts that are not properly supported by the fonts that Ubuntu already installs by default.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Iain Lane (laney)]

Thanks for this. Really interesting issue, sorry it's taken a while to respond.

Gunnar, do you have any thoughts on this?

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

On 2020-09-15 11:31, Iain Lane wrote:
> Gunnar, do you have any thoughts on this?

Yeah, I think my idea to ship Noto fonts by default and give them the highest fontconfig precedence, effectively replacing DejaVu, would cover the proposal in this bug.

@Henri: What I have in mind has basically already been done in Kubuntu. It would be great if you could put the Kubuntu ISO (<https://kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/>) on a USB stick, run the live session, and see if the default Kubuntu fonts are to your liking.

[vishal goswami (goswamivm)]

Right now gnome ships with cantarell, it needs to ship with Noto Sans as default to cover almost 78 languages.

A temporary solution to this problem is to

Install font manager

Install Noto Sans font

Select it as interface text from tweaks

Disable all default fonts and fallback fonts from font manager.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

As you can see in this discourse topic:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/let-selection-of-default-fonts-be-based-on-noto/36923

we are about to install the fonts-noto-core package by default and make Noto default throughout.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package language-selector - 0.222

---------------
language-selector (0.222) mantic; urgency=medium

  * data/pkg_depends:
    - Always pull hunspell and myspell dicts
  * Switch to Noto as default font
    - Add 56-language-selector-prefer.conf
    - Drop 56-language-selector-ar.conf (no longer needed)
    - Simplify list of fonts pulled by check-language-support
    - Install extra fontconfig file for the snaps
    - This is a step to achieve the goal in
      https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/36923
    - Fixes LP: #1866038 and LP: #2009303

 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Wed, 19 Jul 2023 19:35:48 +0200