Sans serif cyrillic font in kubuntu 12.04 is bad

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko]

1) 'lsb_release -rd':
Description: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Release: 12.04

2) Software version - default for kubuntu 12.04 on 28.04.2012 (no additional repositories)

3) Description:
Default font alias for 'Sans Serif' (cyrillic) looks horrible in kubuntu 12.04. This font appear in KDM and when running programs with root access level (e.g. 'kdesudo kate').

AFAIK the default alias for 'Sans Serif' font family is 'Dejavu Sans'. But in kubuntu 12.04 this setting got broken somehow.
So now 'Sans Serif' (also 'Serif' and 'Monospace') have wrong aliases (I think it is 'Nimbus L' font family).

See the attached screenshot for details (this is what shows up when running 'kdesudo kate').

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Maybe dupe of this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/qt4-x11/+bug/945461

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Workaround: copy ".fontconfig" folder from your home directory to /root folder.

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko (kyrboh)]

It seems the workaround isn't going to work - sudo in ubuntu is configured to keep '$HOME'.
I think something must be done with /etc/fonts

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

NeuroMancer: could you please

  (1) attach your '~/.fontconfig' file that you believe is working
  (2) confirm that if you move it out of the way, the fonts appear differently.
  (3) take a screenshot of before, and after
  (4) highlight (eg. red circle/red arrow) which character combinations look particularly bad

[Stanislav Sidorenko (ssidorenko)]

Looks like Naum-Gothic font is used by default.
Removing 'fonts-nanum' package solved the issue for me. Kirill, please try that.

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko (kyrboh)]

sentaus, thanks that's a good workaround.

It proves that it is something wrong with aliases in /etc/fonts

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Paul, I check my workaround again, and now I see - it's help probably for only launch application under root or so.

So please look into sentaus workaround.

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

> It proves that it is something wrong with aliases in /etc/fonts
What the right package then? I think it's not kdebase bug, because bug appear even in Ubuntu bug 945461 and Xubuntu.

[Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)]

Adding (again) qt4-x11 because this bug affects not only KDE apps, but also all Qt apps run as root (confirmed with Skype).

This post may contain some information on what it's caused by: http://alp-notes.blogspot.com/2012/04/qt-fonts-in-ubuntu-1204.html.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Please could I ask everyone to attach their '~/.fontconfig' as listed in comment #6. We need this information, and the answers to the other 3 questions in comment #6 in order to debug this.

[Julius Schwartzenberg (jschwart)]

julius@wijsvinger:~$ file .fontconfig/
.fontconfig/: directory

Should I tar the whole directory and attach it?

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko (kyrboh)]

1. See attachment
2. I haven't clearly understood what I should move out of the way, but when I remove ~/.fonts.conf and ~/.fontconfig fonts remain the same. Nevertheless when I remove 'fonts-nanum' package - everything goes back to normal (see attachment in next post).
3. Attachment in next post
4. The whole set of letters looks bad: letters are too light and wide, letters 'З', 'з' and 'д' are not lined up with others, underlines are too far, etc. I think you should compare the screenshot from the next post to that one, attached to bug report.

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko (kyrboh)]

And here is the screeshot of sans-serif fonts after workaround (i.e. removing 'fonts-nanum' package).

Actually that's how they should look like.

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko (kyrboh)]

Please note that not only 'sans-serif' is affected, also 'serif' is looking bad (e.g. huge kerning). See attachment.

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko (kyrboh)]

I've made an ivestigation. The attached patch for '/etc/fonts' seems to fix the problem .

BUT I haven't tested the korean localization with it.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "This patch fixes bad cyrillic 'sans-serif' and 'serif' BUT is not tested with korean localization" of this bug report has been identified as being a patch. The ubuntu-reviewers team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review the patch. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-reviewers team please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by Brian Murray. Please contact him regarding any issues with the action taken in this bug report.]

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko (kyrboh)]

As long as 'sans-serif' in normal in Gnome/Unity and the patch, changing language detection criteria, fixes the problem I can assume that the problem is that Qt's(KDE's) "lang" passed to font configuration xml's differs from one in GTK (Unity/Gnome).

I mean it turns out in /etc/fonts/conf.d/90-fonts-nanum.conf here:

<test qual="any" name="lang" compare="contains">
      <string>ko</string>
</test>

that "lang" for cyrillic(russian) contains substring "ko". So I think that the contens of "lang" in worth debugging.

[Михаил (mr-mike)]

There is a bug in Qt applications on ubuntu-like distributions. Decided to remove "fonts-nanum". Thanks!

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Still issue in Kubuntu 12.10.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Julius Schwartzenberg (jschwart)]

I looked at /etc/fonts/conf.d/90-fonts-nanum.conf in Debian Wheezy, which seems to have the same lines, but it does not have this problem.

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Still issue in Kubuntu 12.10 Alpha 3.

[Kyrylo Bohdanenko (kyrboh)]

Looks like it's no longer an issue in Kubuntu 12.10 Beta 1.

Can anyone confirm?

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Confirm, seems like fixed in Beta 1, but probably 12.04 require backport some commits or packages to get it fixed.

[Julius Schwartzenberg (jschwart)]

Anybody any idea what was changed in 12.10?
What happens on Kubuntu 12.04 together with Kubuntu-backports?

[Julius Schwartzenberg (jschwart)]

Kubuntu-backports doesn't solve the problem for 12.04.

[Julius Schwartzenberg (jschwart)]

When I install the fontconfig packages from 12.10 on 12.04, the problem seems to disappear here:
fontconfig
fontconfig-config
libfontconfig1
libfontconfig1

Maybe these could be provided in backports if an expert on fontconfig can verify it doesn't create any new problems?

[Julius Schwartzenberg (jschwart)]

This appears to be fixed in Ubuntu 12.04.3 as far as I can see, maybe someone can confirm?

[Alexander Strekalov (iakrevetko)]

I can confirm that this was fixed in 12.04.3. On freshly installed system fonts in Skype rendered correctly.

[Changwoo Ryu (cwryu)]

This is not a bug from font package. Thanks.

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

This is not reproducible in 14.04 (maybe earlier) as far I remember.