R devel - Mar 2020 - Plotmath on Fedora 31 broken with with pango >= 1.44 - workarounds?

Le mercredi 25 mars 2020 ? 11:28 +0100, I?aki Ucar a ?crit
:
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 01:14, Gavin Simpson <ucfagls at gmail.com>
> wrote:
Hi,
> Adding devel at lists.fp.o to CC. A workaround is to avoid using PS
> fonts for symbols.
PS fonts are dead mid-term everywhere, and already forbidden in new
Fedora font packages (because we are somewhat leading edge, but not as
much as people think)
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US//packaging-guidelines/FontsPolicy/#_font_file_formats

PS font users need to switch to OpenType fonts or work with their
prefered font upstream to convert in modern well supported formats
(font format wars have endend last millenium, even before the browser
wars ended, it?s long past time to deprecate the losers).

That?s normal IT format obsolescence.


That being said, that?s not what is happening here.

R brought this all on itself by hardcoding a Windows-only ?Symbol? font
family name in its default conf. Linux systems are UTF-8 by default for
~20 years now, they don?t need the forcing of magic font families to
handle symbols not present in the 8-bit legacy Windows encodings.

The actual effect of this conf is not the selection of font files with
special and unusual symbols. It is to priorize fonts that match the
"Symbol" magic name. And those fonts are few and crumbling on Linux
systems, because no one has needed to bother with them since Linux
switched to UTF-8 last millenium.

Just stop using ?Symbol? in R and things will work a lot better.
Alternatively, prepare to maintain the ?Symbol? aliasing stack in
fontconfig (and fight with wine for it), because *no* *one* *else*
*cares* about this legacy Windows-specific stuff.


Fontconfig upstream already told this to R users in its own issue
tracker.


Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 12:25, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> R brought this all on itself by hardcoding a Windows-only ?Symbol? font
> family name in its default conf. Linux systems are UTF-8 by default for
> ~20 years now, they don?t need the forcing of magic font families to
> handle symbols not present in the 8-bit legacy Windows encodings.
>
> The actual effect of this conf is not the selection of font files with
> special and unusual symbols. It is to priorize fonts that match the
> "Symbol" magic name. And those fonts are few and crumbling on
Linux
> systems, because no one has needed to bother with them since Linux
> switched to UTF-8 last millenium.
>
> Just stop using ?Symbol? in R and things will work a lot better.
> Alternatively, prepare to maintain the ?Symbol? aliasing stack in
> fontconfig (and fight with wine for it), because *no* *one* *else*
> *cares* about this legacy Windows-specific stuff.
So, in the light of Nicolas' input (thanks!), I think that font
selection should be fixed upstream in R. I'd be happy to put all this
together in R's bugzilla, but I don't have an account. Could someone
please invite me?

I?aki

Hi

Thanks for your input on this I?aki and Nicolas.

I am starting testing an R fix for this problem today.

As suggested, the plan is to allow the R user to specify a font family 
other than "symbol" for plotmath output (or, more generally, in R 
parlance, for 'font=5' or 'fontface=5') on a Cairo-based
graphics device.

Paul


On 27/03/20 11:30 pm, I?aki Ucar wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 12:25, Nicolas Mailhot
> <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net> wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> R brought this all on itself by hardcoding a Windows-only ?Symbol? font
>> family name in its default conf. Linux systems are UTF-8 by default for
>> ~20 years now, they don?t need the forcing of magic font families to
>> handle symbols not present in the 8-bit legacy Windows encodings.
>>
>> The actual effect of this conf is not the selection of font files with
>> special and unusual symbols. It is to priorize fonts that match the
>> "Symbol" magic name. And those fonts are few and crumbling on
Linux
>> systems, because no one has needed to bother with them since Linux
>> switched to UTF-8 last millenium.
>>
>> Just stop using ?Symbol? in R and things will work a lot better.
>> Alternatively, prepare to maintain the ?Symbol? aliasing stack in
>> fontconfig (and fight with wine for it), because *no* *one* *else*
>> *cares* about this legacy Windows-specific stuff.
> 
> So, in the light of Nicolas' input (thanks!), I think that font
> selection should be fixed upstream in R. I'd be happy to put all this
> together in R's bugzilla, but I don't have an account. Could
someone
> please invite me?
> 
> I?aki
> 
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