some language-selector fontconfig should not exist

[tomoe_musashi]

we know
29-language-selector-ko-kr.conf
69-language-selector-ja-jp.conf
69-language-selector-ka-ge.conf
69-language-selector-ko-kr.conf
is deleted from the package for long time ago
and the fonts config below should be deleted as well:
69-language-selector-zh-cn.conf
69-language-selector-zh-hk.conf
69-language-selector-zh-mo.conf
69-language-selector-zh-sg.conf
69-language-selector-zh-tw.conf

once the specific language environment are set, it binds strongly and overides all other font
other fonts config won't work until those lang selector config no more exist.
now ubuntu seeds with fonts-droid and fonts-wqy-microhei package
they already set the sans-serif and monospace fonts for zh lang tag.
or maybe those language selector config can be used for binding serif fonts.

And also i will report another bug about replacing DroidSans/WenQuanYi fonts with Noto Sans CJK(Source Han Sans).

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Thanks for your comments!

The Chinese fontconfig files, which reside in language-selector, is a result of many discussions in bug reports and Chinese forums. Indeed there may be reasons for reconsidering the setup, but before changing it, the topic needs to be discussed and agreed upon by several Chinese users.

Droid Sans Fallback is currently the default font for rendering Chinese contents irrespective of the session locale, so as long as we are only talking about that font, it ought to be possible to drop the language-selector files. But also other fonts are installed for Chinese users, and it's a little more complex.

Even if the fonts are strongly binded in the language-selector files, it's possible to override them. This is an example of how you can set another preferred font for an individual user:

$ cat ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/90-my-chinese.conf
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <match target="pattern">
  <test name="lang" compare="contains">
   <string>zh</string>
  </test>
  <test qual="any" name="family">
   <string>sans-serif</string>
  </test>
  <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
   <string>WenQuanYi Micro Hei</string>
  </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>
$ LANG=zh_HK.UTF-8 fc-match
wqy-microhei.ttc: "文泉驛微米黑" "Regular"
$

Anyway, to proceed with this, more people would need to be involved. One question is whether now is the right time to hold such a discussion. You mentioned Noto Sans CJK, and that font may be an option going forward, but as far as I know it's not packaged yet due to some unresolved license issue. Possibly it would be better to wait with discussing the Chinese font setup until Noto Sans CJK is a valid option.

@Aron, what's your view?

[Aron Xu (happyaron)]

Don't think dropping that locale-hacked fontconfig configuration is feasible because it will mess up system with other fonts installed for that locale - this is true because users may have propetary fonts installed themselves (and it's common) which does not have a fontconfig configuration acommpanying it.

As for the Noto Sans, let's postpone the discussion until it's available in the repository.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Ok, then I close this bug report.

tomoe_musashi, if there is a particular issue you are encountering, which can't be handled by tweaking fontconfig in the way I showed above, please feel welcome to file another bug report on that issue.