[Grub] There are messy codes on displaying Chinese characters in grub after install xenial-desktop_0320.

[kyt]

[Machine]
Dell Vostro 3900
  [Version]
xenial-desktop_0320（amd64&i386）
  [Details]
[Grub] There are messy codes on displaying Chinese characters in grub after install xenial-desktop_0320.
  [Test Case]
1. nstall xenial-desktop_0320 & reboot
2. Check the grub
Expected Result: no messy codes in grub
Actual Result: There are messy codes in grub

安装xenial-desktop_0320后，grub出现乱码

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Jiulun.Du (dujiulun2006)]

This also affects me. I filed a duplicated bug report #1568105.

The new version of grub-common package ships a smaller unicode.pf2 font, which I think is the cause.

[ShuiLu Pi (pishuilu1128)]

Yes, this bug is caused by unicode.pf2 font. I use unicode.pf2 which is in old version testing, the font is displayed properly.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

That's interesting. You mean this arrangement of symbols has no meaning?

I would have expected to see a "recovery" option show up in that specific place; and I would have said this is because of a translation.

That said, I don't see how this may be caused by unicode.pf2. It is just a font. How do you test with the old version?

[Anthony Wong (anthonywong)]

You can see from the screenshot that there are actually some characters with a ? in a box, that should be a placeholder for characters that do not exist in the font.

[ShuiLu Pi (pishuilu1128)]

I mean unicode.pf2 not include some characters in new grub2 package. But these characters is Included in old grub2 package.

[Jiulun.Du (dujiulun2006)]

I'm re-uploading my screenshot in my duplicated report.

As you can see, in recent versions of Grub, all recovery and old kernel entries reside in "高级选项" (Chinese for "advanced options"). In 29 version from wily, the four characters are displayed fine; while in 36 version from xenial, only "级" is shown correctly and the other three are boxed question marks, meaning the character cannot be displayed by the font.

I didn't test 29 font with 36 version, but the font does become smaller, and this is nonetheless a regression.

BTW, this is the first screen most Chinese users will see when they boot Ubuntu (not just Kylin, all Ubuntu variants).

[Jiulun.Du (dujiulun2006)]

Sorry about the operation above, buggy mouse...

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Indeed. I'm sorry about that, it goes to show that I need to adjust my prescription (or look more closely, in any case). There's indeed missing glyphs.

I'm looking into this.

[zhangchao (zctgbhu)]

I found that this problem may be caused by libfreetype。
There are some problems with unicode.pf2 in the Grub2 of 1604（Size only 1.4M），and 1510 is good(Size is 2.4M)。
in 1604，if the libfreetype version is reduced to 1510(2.5.2-4ubuntu2), and build build-grub-mkfont，the unicode.pf2 built by./build-grub-mkfont is normal。

[zhangchao (zctgbhu)]

I found If use the 2.6.x version of the libfreetype make unicore.pf2 in grub2, wiill only generate 32768 glyphs 。
use the 2.5.x version of the libfreetype make unicore.pf2 is good，and there are 57086 glyphs。
32768 = 2^15 , May be related to the type of length?
But I did not find any relevant changes in the 2.6.0 version of libfreetype....

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

I've been bisecting this for most of the day yesterday and this morning; tracked it down to a single commit in freetype. After some more refining, I managed to reduce this to two lines of change reverting the bad commit.

I have a package in my PPA right now that will build to make sure freetype isn't completely broken by this change; once it's done I'll also push grub to the same PPA for a build test to make sure it's really fixed. If all these tests pass, I'll upload the fix.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package freetype - 2.6.1-0.1ubuntu2

---------------
freetype (2.6.1-0.1ubuntu2) xenial; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/0001-Revert-pcf-Signedness-fixes.patch: revert signedness
    fixes in pcf which break grub-mkfont (limits glyphs to 32768, which drops
    most zh_CN glyphs and probably others). (LP: #1559933)

 -- Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <email address hidden> Fri, 15 Apr 2016 14:53:27 -0400

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package grub2 - 2.02~beta2-36ubuntu3

---------------
grub2 (2.02~beta2-36ubuntu3) xenial; urgency=medium

  * No-change rebuild to correctly build our unicode font against libfreetype6.
    (LP: #1559933)

 -- Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <email address hidden> Fri, 15 Apr 2016 17:21:17 -0400