Displays characters from different font when font doesn't contain it

[Kartik Mistry]

Binary package hint: gnome-specimen

As per upstream request, I am re-filing Debian bug #493088 here.

Package: gnome-specimen
Version: 0.4-3
Severity: normal

Hi!

I am in awe about this really helpful and nice tool. Though, there is
one drawback that I noticed (possibly because of my German locale):
gnome-specimen does display characters that aren't included in the font
with the default font it seems. That is, if a font doesn't contain
informations for e.g. German umlauts, gnome-specimen will still display
rendered umlauts - but they are coming from a totally different font.

I almost was about to file a bugreport against a font for b0rked
characters because of this until I looked more closer. It would be a
better idea to display the not found box [] or nothing at all instead of
the corresponding character from the default font, to make it clear that
the font doesn't contain support for that character.

Thanks,
Rhonda

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
 APT prefers testing
 APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-powerpc
Locale: LANG=de_AT.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_AT.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages gnome-specimen depends on:
ii python 2.5.2-1 An interactive high-level object-o
ii python-central 0.6.8 register and build utility for Pyt
ii python-glade2 2.12.1-6 GTK+ bindings: Glade support
ii python-gnome2 2.22.0-1 Python bindings for the GNOME desk
ii python-gtk2 2.12.1-6 Python bindings for the GTK+ widge

gnome-specimen recommends no packages.

gnome-specimen suggests no packages.

[wouter bolsterlee (wbolster)]

Confirming.

This might be useful: http://davyd.livejournal.com/234143.html

[Mechanical snail (replicator-snail)]

This is called font substitution, and it's ultimately controlled by fontconfig. I assume that Specimen is using normal GNOME text-rendering functions and just passing it the chosen font. A character not present gets automatically substituted with some other font. That's what should happen for most purposes—but it makes no sense for a font viewer.

[Mechanical snail (replicator-snail)]

Issue still exists in version 0.4 on Precise (KDE).