Emojis in notifications are enormous

[Elana Hashman]

Since upgrading to Linux Mint 20 from 19 (18.04 Ubuntu base to 20.04), I've noticed MATE notifications now render absolutely massive emojis. LM is using the unmodified Ubuntu MATE package, so I am submitting the report here in the hopes you can assist.

Not sure if this is the right package for the report but this is what dpkg -S pointed me at.

Expected behaviour: emojis are approximately the same size as the rest of the text in the notification.

ehashman@red-dot:~$ apt show mate-notification-daemon
Package: mate-notification-daemon
Version: 1.24.0-1
Priority: optional
Section: universe/x11
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <email address hidden>
Original-Maintainer: Debian+Ubuntu MATE Packaging Team <email address hidden>
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 283 kB
Provides: notification-daemon
Depends: mate-notification-daemon-common (= 1.24.0-1), libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.12.4), libc6 (>= 2.4), libcairo2 (>= 1.10.0), libcanberra-gtk3-0 (>= 0.25), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.37.3), libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.21.4), libnotify4 (>= 0.7.0), libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libwnck-3-0 (>= 2.91.6), libx11-6, libglib2.0-bin
Homepage: http://www.mate-desktop.org/
Task: ubuntukylin-desktop, ubuntu-mate-core, ubuntu-mate-desktop
Download-Size: 56.7 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: yes
APT-Sources: http://la-mirrors.evowise.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 Packages
Description: daemon to display passive popup notifications
 mate-notification-daemon displays passive popup notifications, as per
 the Desktop Notifications Specification.
 .
 The Desktop Notifications Specification provides a standard way of
 doing passive popup notifications on the Linux desktop. These are
 designed to notify the user of something without interrupting their
 work with a dialog box that they must close. Passive popups can
 automatically disappear after a short period of time, as per the
 Desktop Notifications spec.

ehashman@red-dot:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=LinuxMint
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20
DISTRIB_CODENAME=ulyana
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 20 Ulyana"

[Elana Hashman (ehashman)]

This also seems to affect MATE Terminal 1.24.0. I am not sure what component of MATE to assign this bug to.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Just FYI I've tried current Ubuntu (non MATE) 20.04 and there emoji's render fine at ~font size.
Tested with:
$ notify-send "😀FOO"

[Utkarsh Gupta (utkarsh)]

Awesome, thanks, Christian. I'll try as well with the MATE terminal.

Elana, do you have a simple reproducer or something with which I can reproduce?

Though a super quick observation: the version in Focal *now* is 1.24.0-2ubuntu1 (instead of what you have - 1.24.0-1), so maybe that's worth checking as well.

I'm off today but I'll (try to) keep this in my TODO! :)

[Elana Hashman (ehashman)]

 $ echo "😀 FOO"

was sufficient for me to repro in MATE terminal.

I'm super curious if this is:

- a Linux Mint specific thing (possible, but all the packages appear unmodified; could maybe be a config setting)
- a low-DPI screen specific thing (have not seen this behaviour on a high DPI/4k screen)
- something else?

but I don't have the knowledge to easily narrow it down.

I can try reproducing in both a virtual environment (Ubuntu MATE VM) and live boot now that this is getting some attention!

I also asked on the LM forums but did not get a particularly warm response... https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=1969882

[Utkarsh Gupta (utkarsh)]

> $ echo "😀 FOO"
>
> was sufficient for me to repro in MATE terminal.

Aah, running on Focal host with 96x96 DPI, I couldn't reproduce this; attaching a screenshot as well.

> a Linux Mint specific thing (possible, but all the packages
> appear unmodified; could maybe be a config setting)

Very interesting, but could be :o

> I can try reproducing in both a virtual environment (Ubuntu MATE VM)
> and live boot now that this is getting some attention!

No rush, though but that'd be helpful. I couldn't reproduce it in a VM either. So it's a bit strange now.

That said, I've forwarded this to upstream; cf: https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-terminal/issues/383. Hopefully we'll be able to narrow it down to some extent, I believe.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

This was fixed via ubuntu-mate-settings 21.04.3 in Ubuntu MATE 21.04