Comment 3 for bug 2000551

Hi Aurora, and thanks for your report.

I see that LKLUG is pulled by default by several meta packages, and I'd prefer to avoid stopping them from doing that.

$ apt rdepends fonts-lklug-sinhala
fonts-lklug-sinhala
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: ubuntu-desktop
  Recommends: xubuntu-desktop
  Recommends: xubuntu-core
  Recommends: vanilla-gnome-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntustudio-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntukylin-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntucinnamon-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntu-unity-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntu-mate-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntu-mate-core
  Recommends: ubuntu-budgie-desktop
  Recommends: lubuntu-desktop
  Recommends: kubuntu-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntu-desktop-minimal

Instead we can use fontconfig to achive the desired result. I have played with the language-selector package and made a test version available here:

https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj/+archive/ubuntu/language-selector

The change is not huge. You can see what I did in the repo:

https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/ubuntu/+source/language-selector/commit/?id=36d055d1

The point with the change is to make fontconfig give Noto Sans Sinhala respective Noto Serif Sinhala higher precedence than LKLUG.

The fonts-noto-core package needs to be installed, of course, which it currently is not for all users. So for a Sinhala speaking user, who wants to use Noto fonts for rendering Sinhala, they can do either of these steps:

* Select the Sinhala language when installing Ubuntu. That way fonts-noto-core will be installed at first login.

* Open Language Support and add the Sinhala language from there, which will pull fonts-noto-core.

As regards snaps, this approach makes a difference with the Firefox snap at least.

Can you please install language-selector-gnome and language-selector-common from the PPA I mentioned, and let us know what you think.