Simos Xenitellis
2005-Nov-21 08:51 UTC
[Fontconfig] Why do asian fonts contain greek glyphs?
Hi All,
There is a nasty situation in the current configuration on fontconfig
that makes it really bad when displaying Greek.
For example, you get this issue when installing the latest Ubuntu Breezy
(Dev version) and it looks like
http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/attachment.cgi?id=3690
Why does Greek show like that? The characters are always slanted, big
space between them, and in general they are terrible.
New distributions have FreeFonts and MgOpen that support Greek.
/etc/fonts/fonts.conf says:
<alias>
<family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family>
<family>Helvetica</family>
<family>Arial</family>
<family>Verdana</family>
<family>Albany AMT</family>
<family>Nimbus Sans L</family>
<family>Luxi Sans</family>
<family>Kochi Gothic</family>
<family>AR PL KaitiM GB</family>
<family>AR PL KaitiM Big5</family>
<family>?? ????</family>
<family>Baekmuk Dotum</family>
<family>SimSun</family>
<family>FreeSans</family>
<default><family>sans-serif</family></default>
</alias>
which means that fonts are searched in this order to find Greek glyphs.
It would be nice and perfect, unfortunately
1. Kochi Gothic
2. AR PL KaitiM GB
3. Baekmuk Dotum
have Greek glyphs and they get matched, before FreeSans gets the chance.
These Asian fonts appear to be double-spaced(?) and display Greek in a
way that native Greek speakers are not used to; it looks terrible.
Therefore,
a. How can we instruct fontconfig (fonts.conf) to ignore any Greek
glyphs found in those Asian fonts?
b. Is ignoring the Greek glyphs in those Asian fonts the correct path in
solving the problem?
For more on this, please see
http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15108
Cheers,
Simos Xenitellis
On Thu, Sep 29, 2005 at 01:59:26AM +0900, mpsuzuki@hiroshima-u.ac.jp wrote:> But Unicode.org didn''t assign special code points for them, so it''s > a bit difficult to exclude fixed-fullwidth-Greek/Cyrillic in Asian > fonts automatically. Some intelligent mechanism might be required to > do that.It is, however, merely a symptom of a larger problem that''s been discussed before. There are other fonts that contain high quality versions of glyphs for their intended language, and then low quality glyphs for other languages for the purpose of broader coverage. Automatically excluding the "bad" glyphs in favor of superior ones from another font requires fairly specific configuration, from what I''ve seen. John Thacker -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/fontconfig/attachments/20050928/77bd483b/attachment.pgp
Simos Xenitellis
2005-Nov-21 08:51 UTC
[Fontconfig] Re: Why do asian fonts contain greek glyphs?
Mike FABIAN wrote:> Simos Xenitellis <simos74@gmx.net> ????????: > > >> Hi All, >> There is a nasty situation in the current configuration on fontconfig >> that makes it really bad when displaying Greek. >> For example, you get this issue when installing the latest Ubuntu >> Breezy (Dev version) and it looks like >> http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/attachment.cgi?id=3690 >> >> Why does Greek show like that? The characters are always slanted, big >> space between them, and in general they are terrible. >> New distributions have FreeFonts and MgOpen that support Greek. >> >> /etc/fonts/fonts.conf says: >> >> <alias> >> <family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family> >> <family>Helvetica</family> >> <family>Arial</family> >> <family>Verdana</family> >> <family>Albany AMT</family> >> <family>Nimbus Sans L</family> >> <family>Luxi Sans</family> >> <family>Kochi Gothic</family> >> <family>AR PL KaitiM GB</family> >> <family>AR PL KaitiM Big5</family> >> <family>?? ????</family> >> <family>Baekmuk Dotum</family> >> <family>SimSun</family> >> <family>FreeSans</family> >> <default><family>sans-serif</family></default> >> </alias> >> >> which means that fonts are searched in this order to find Greek >> glyphs. It would be nice and perfect, unfortunately >> >> 1. Kochi Gothic >> 2. AR PL KaitiM GB >> 3. Baekmuk Dotum >> >> have Greek glyphs and they get matched, before FreeSans gets the >> chance. These Asian fonts appear to be double-spaced(?) and display >> Greek in a way that native Greek speakers are not used to; it looks >> terrible. >> >> Therefore, >> a. How can we instruct fontconfig (fonts.conf) to ignore any Greek >> glyphs found in those Asian fonts? >> > > Why don''t you just move the fonts good for Greek up to higher > priority in the prefer list. I.e. change > > <alias> > <family>serif</family> > <prefer> > <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family> > <family>Times New Roman</family> > <family>Thorndale AMT</family> > <family>Luxi Serif</family> > <family>Nimbus Roman No9 L</family> > <family>Times</family> > <family>Frank Ruehl</family> > <family>Kochi Mincho</family> > <family>AR PL SungtiL GB</family> > <family>SimSun</family> > <family>AR PL Mingti2L Big5</family> > <family>?? ??</family> > <family>Baekmuk Batang</family> > <family>FreeSerif</family> > </prefer> > </alias> > > to > > <alias> > <family>serif</family> > <prefer> > <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family> > <family>Times New Roman</family> > <family>Thorndale AMT</family> > <family>Luxi Serif</family> > <family>Nimbus Roman No9 L</family> > <family>Times</family> > <family>Frank Ruehl</family> > <family>FreeSerif</family> > <family>Kochi Mincho</family> > <family>AR PL SungtiL GB</family> > <family>SimSun</family> > <family>AR PL Mingti2L Big5</family> > <family>?? ??</family> > <family>Baekmuk Batang</family> > </prefer> > </alias> > > and if the MgOpen fonts are nicer than the fonts from the > "freefont"-project, add them above "FreeSerif" for example. > > >> b. Is ignoring the Greek glyphs in those Asian fonts the correct path >> in solving the problem? >> > > I don''t think this is a good solution. > > Imagine that the only fonts installed which have Greek glyphs are > those Asian fonts. In that case it is surely better to display Greek > which is ugly but readable than to display only boxes. > > To display Greek as beautiful as possible, the fonts in the prefer > lists just need to be sorted so that the most beautiful fonts are on > top. >Thanks all for the input. I''ll produce a patch that places the FreeFonts and MgOpen fonts higher up in the list for Sans/Serif/Mono fonts in fonts.conf. FreeFonts were added by Vasilis Vasaitis two years ago http://cvs.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/fonts.conf.in?r1=1.24&r2=1.25 at the bottom of the list. This has not changed since then, although some distributions would edit the list for their purposes. Cheers, Simos Xenitellis
mpsuzuki@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
2005-Nov-21 08:51 UTC
[Fontconfig] Why do asian fonts contain greek glyphs?
Hi On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 13:20:38 -0400 John Thacker <thacker@math.cornell.edu> wrote:>On Thu, Sep 29, 2005 at 01:59:26AM +0900, mpsuzuki@hiroshima-u.ac.jp wrote: >> But Unicode.org didn''t assign special code points for them, so it''s >> a bit difficult to exclude fixed-fullwidth-Greek/Cyrillic in Asian >> fonts automatically. Some intelligent mechanism might be required to >> do that. > >It is, however, merely a symptom of a larger problem that''s been discussed >before.Can I access previous discussion about the issue? Recently, there was similar discussion about CJK Unified Ideograph in gtk-i18n-list http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-i18n-list/2005-August/msg00059.html http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-i18n-list/2005-September/msg00000.html But I think the problem is underestimated in the discussion. Regards, mpsuzuki
>>>>> "Simos" == Simos Xenitellis <simos74@gmx.net> writes:Simos> Why does Greek show like that? The characters are always Simos> slanted, big space between them, and in general they are Simos> terrible. I''m not completely sure about the historical reason, but the pre-unicode CJK character set standards all included greek characters. I suspect this was for rendering math, given how the glyphs are typically shaped. Cyrillic glyphs are also included in the sets and could also be an issue. Emacs has a similar problem with greek and cyrillic text pasted from other X apps, due in part to the fact the the original i18n extension for emacs, MULE, was written by and for Japanese users. Simos> a. How can we instruct fontconfig (fonts.conf) to Simos> ignore any Greek glyphs found in those Asian fonts? The locale should affect font selection when looking for backup glyphs. It should help to ensure that a font which matches the user''s primary desired locale is the top preference for any given font alias, such as serif, sans or monospace. Beyond the locale, the apps can tag the text with a language. Simos> b. Is ignoring the Greek glyphs in those Asian Simos> fonts the correct path in solving the problem? It would probably be a good idea to fall back to a CJK font only in a CJK locale or for text marked as C, J, K or V. How best to accomplish that is an /interesting/ question.... Ignoring only fonts that include a specific set of language matches (such as the regex "^(zh|ja|ko)(-..)?$") would be enough for this specific issue, but seems a bit kludgy, yes? -JimC -- James H. Cloos, Jr. <cloos@jhcloos.com>
mpsuzuki@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
2005-Nov-21 08:51 UTC
[Fontconfig] Why do asian fonts contain greek glyphs?
Hi, On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:56:07 +0100 Simos Xenitellis <simos74@gmx.net> wrote:>have Greek glyphs and they get matched, before FreeSans gets the chance. >These Asian fonts appear to be double-spaced(?) and display Greek in a >way that native Greek speakers are not used to; it looks terrible.It''s because Japanese traditional charset (JIS X 0208:1983, JIS X 0212, JIS X 0213) includes Greek characters, and encodings based on those charset (iso-2022-jp, euc-jp, ms-kanji and its families) includes them. As you''ve pointed out, Greek characters in JIS charset is NOT for native script. In Japan, usually they are used as mathematical symbol, instead of writing Greek text. I think, Japanese people prefer native Greek fonts to see Greek text, if it''s available. In addition, JIS charset includes Cyrillic characters. Some Chinese and Korean charsets were influenced by Japanese charset and include Greek and Cyrillic glyphs. I think, Greek characters in Asian charsets should be treated as "Fullwidth Latin Chars" (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFF00.pdf). But Unicode.org didn''t assign special code points for them, so it''s a bit difficult to exclude fixed-fullwidth-Greek/Cyrillic in Asian fonts automatically. Some intelligent mechanism might be required to do that. Regards, mpsuzuki
Simos Xenitellis
2005-Nov-21 08:51 UTC
[Fontconfig] Re: Why do asian fonts contain greek glyphs?
Simos Xenitellis wrote:> Mike FABIAN wrote: >> Simos Xenitellis <simos74@gmx.net> ????????: >> >> >>> Hi All, >>> There is a nasty situation in the current configuration on fontconfig >>> that makes it really bad when displaying Greek. >>> For example, you get this issue when installing the latest Ubuntu >>> Breezy (Dev version) and it looks like >>> http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/attachment.cgi?id=3690 >>> >>> Why does Greek show like that? The characters are always slanted, big >>> space between them, and in general they are terrible. >>> New distributions have FreeFonts and MgOpen that support Greek. >>> >>> /etc/fonts/fonts.conf says: >>> >>> <alias> >>> <family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family> >>> <family>Helvetica</family> >>> <family>Arial</family> >>> <family>Verdana</family> >>> <family>Albany AMT</family> >>> <family>Nimbus Sans L</family> >>> <family>Luxi Sans</family> >>> <family>Kochi Gothic</family> >>> <family>AR PL KaitiM GB</family> >>> <family>AR PL KaitiM Big5</family> >>> <family>?? ????</family> >>> <family>Baekmuk Dotum</family> >>> <family>SimSun</family> >>> <family>FreeSans</family> >>> <default><family>sans-serif</family></default> >>> </alias> >>> >>> which means that fonts are searched in this order to find Greek >>> glyphs. It would be nice and perfect, unfortunately >>> >>> 1. Kochi Gothic >>> 2. AR PL KaitiM GB >>> 3. Baekmuk Dotum >>> >>> have Greek glyphs and they get matched, before FreeSans gets the >>> chance. These Asian fonts appear to be double-spaced(?) and display >>> Greek in a way that native Greek speakers are not used to; it looks >>> terrible. >>> >>> Therefore, >>> a. How can we instruct fontconfig (fonts.conf) to ignore any Greek >>> glyphs found in those Asian fonts? >>> >> >> Why don''t you just move the fonts good for Greek up to higher >> priority in the prefer list. I.e. change >> <alias> >> <family>serif</family> >> <prefer> >> <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family> >> <family>Times New Roman</family> >> <family>Thorndale AMT</family> >> <family>Luxi Serif</family> >> <family>Nimbus Roman No9 L</family> >> <family>Times</family> >> <family>Frank Ruehl</family> >> <family>Kochi Mincho</family> >> <family>AR PL SungtiL GB</family> >> <family>SimSun</family> >> <family>AR PL Mingti2L Big5</family> >> <family>?? ??</family> >> <family>Baekmuk Batang</family> >> <family>FreeSerif</family> >> </prefer> >> </alias> >> >> to >> <alias> >> <family>serif</family> >> <prefer> >> <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family> >> <family>Times New Roman</family> >> <family>Thorndale AMT</family> >> <family>Luxi Serif</family> >> <family>Nimbus Roman No9 L</family> >> <family>Times</family> >> <family>Frank Ruehl</family> >> <family>FreeSerif</family> >> <family>Kochi Mincho</family> >> <family>AR PL SungtiL GB</family> >> <family>SimSun</family> >> <family>AR PL Mingti2L Big5</family> >> <family>?? ??</family> >> <family>Baekmuk Batang</family> >> </prefer> >> </alias> >> >> and if the MgOpen fonts are nicer than the fonts from the >> "freefont"-project, add them above "FreeSerif" for example. >> >> >>> b. Is ignoring the Greek glyphs in those Asian fonts the correct path >>> in solving the problem? >>> >> >> I don''t think this is a good solution. >> >> Imagine that the only fonts installed which have Greek glyphs are >> those Asian fonts. In that case it is surely better to display Greek >> which is ugly but readable than to display only boxes. >> >> To display Greek as beautiful as possible, the fonts in the prefer >> lists just need to be sorted so that the most beautiful fonts are on >> top. >> > Thanks all for the input. > I''ll produce a patch that places the FreeFonts and MgOpen fonts higher > up in the list for Sans/Serif/Mono fonts in fonts.conf. > > FreeFonts were added by Vasilis Vasaitis two years ago > http://cvs.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/fonts.conf.in?r1=1.24&r2=1.25 > > at the bottom of the list. This has not changed since then, although > some distributions would edit the list for their purposes.Hi All, I created a bug report and patch, https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4639 The patch 1. adds MgOpen (Canonica for serif, Moderna for sans serif) 2. places FreeFonts higher than the asian fonts that contain Greek glyphs 3. between MgOpen and FreeFonts, MgOpen has higher preference and is used if available. Please apply as soon as possible as we try to make the ubuntu deadline, http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15108 Cheers, Simos Xenitellis
Mike FABIAN
2005-Nov-21 08:51 UTC
[Fontconfig] Re: Why do asian fonts contain greek glyphs?
Simos Xenitellis <simos74@gmx.net> ????????:> Hi All, > There is a nasty situation in the current configuration on fontconfig > that makes it really bad when displaying Greek. > For example, you get this issue when installing the latest Ubuntu > Breezy (Dev version) and it looks like > http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/attachment.cgi?id=3690 > > Why does Greek show like that? The characters are always slanted, big > space between them, and in general they are terrible. > New distributions have FreeFonts and MgOpen that support Greek. > > /etc/fonts/fonts.conf says: > > <alias> > <family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family> > <family>Helvetica</family> > <family>Arial</family> > <family>Verdana</family> > <family>Albany AMT</family> > <family>Nimbus Sans L</family> > <family>Luxi Sans</family> > <family>Kochi Gothic</family> > <family>AR PL KaitiM GB</family> > <family>AR PL KaitiM Big5</family> > <family>?? ????</family> > <family>Baekmuk Dotum</family> > <family>SimSun</family> > <family>FreeSans</family> > <default><family>sans-serif</family></default> > </alias> > > which means that fonts are searched in this order to find Greek > glyphs. It would be nice and perfect, unfortunately > > 1. Kochi Gothic > 2. AR PL KaitiM GB > 3. Baekmuk Dotum > > have Greek glyphs and they get matched, before FreeSans gets the > chance. These Asian fonts appear to be double-spaced(?) and display > Greek in a way that native Greek speakers are not used to; it looks > terrible. > > Therefore, > a. How can we instruct fontconfig (fonts.conf) to ignore any Greek > glyphs found in those Asian fonts?Why don''t you just move the fonts good for Greek up to higher priority in the prefer list. I.e. change <alias> <family>serif</family> <prefer> <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family> <family>Times New Roman</family> <family>Thorndale AMT</family> <family>Luxi Serif</family> <family>Nimbus Roman No9 L</family> <family>Times</family> <family>Frank Ruehl</family> <family>Kochi Mincho</family> <family>AR PL SungtiL GB</family> <family>SimSun</family> <family>AR PL Mingti2L Big5</family> <family>?? ??</family> <family>Baekmuk Batang</family> <family>FreeSerif</family> </prefer> </alias> to <alias> <family>serif</family> <prefer> <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family> <family>Times New Roman</family> <family>Thorndale AMT</family> <family>Luxi Serif</family> <family>Nimbus Roman No9 L</family> <family>Times</family> <family>Frank Ruehl</family> <family>FreeSerif</family> <family>Kochi Mincho</family> <family>AR PL SungtiL GB</family> <family>SimSun</family> <family>AR PL Mingti2L Big5</family> <family>?? ??</family> <family>Baekmuk Batang</family> </prefer> </alias> and if the MgOpen fonts are nicer than the fonts from the "freefont"-project, add them above "FreeSerif" for example.> b. Is ignoring the Greek glyphs in those Asian fonts the correct path > in solving the problem?I don''t think this is a good solution. Imagine that the only fonts installed which have Greek glyphs are those Asian fonts. In that case it is surely better to display Greek which is ugly but readable than to display only boxes. To display Greek as beautiful as possible, the fonts in the prefer lists just need to be sorted so that the most beautiful fonts are on top. -- Mike FABIAN <mfabian@suse.de> http://www.suse.de/~mfabian ?????????????
Patrick Lam
2005-Nov-21 08:51 UTC
[Fontconfig] Re: Why do asian fonts contain greek glyphs?
Simos Xenitellis wrote:> Please apply as soon as possible as we try to make the ubuntu deadline, > http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15108I''ve applied the patch to HEAD and the 2_4 branch. pat