Subject: bug#41344: closed (Re: [PATCH] gnu: fontconfig: Add replacement with font-dejavu instead of gs-fonts.)

From: [email-masked] (GNU bug Tracking System)
Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 22:02:04 +0000

Your bug report

#41344: Font broken in GUI application with guix pack

which was filed against the guix package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to [email-masked].

-- 
41344: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=41344
GNU Bug Tracking System
Contact [email-masked] with problems

Subject: Re: [PATCH] gnu: fontconfig: Add replacement with font-dejavu instead of gs-fonts.
From: Marius Bakke <[email-masked]>
To: Leo Famulari <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:39 +0200
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Leo Famulari <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Sun, May 17, 2020 at 04:50:12PM +0200, Marius Bakke wrote:
>> This is a hack to make (some) fonts working when users don't have fonts
>> specified in their system configuration, and (crucially) places where
>> the fontconfig cache may be unavailable such as 'guix pack's.
>> 
>> I'm not sure whether font-dejavu is a good replacement here.  Another
>> approach could be to convert gs-fonts to TrueType or OpenType format.
>> 
>> Thoughts?  I don't know much about fonts and would appreciate feedback.
>
> I think you should push right away, assuming that it helps and doesn't
> rebuild the world.

I pushed the patch as ab9de8cfb0525ef43668712ac898707f97f9a620.

I verified that it fixes the immediate problem with fonts in the Guix
manual (#41282) as well as 'guix pack' (#41344).  It should also provide
a decent fallback for cases where the user did not explicitly install
any fonts such as in #41241.

Hoping for angry reports now about why such a poor replacement font was
chosen.  ;-)

Subject: Font broken in GUI application with guix pack
From: Alexandros Theodotou <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 17 May 2020 05:05:39 +0100
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Hi,

This is the command I ran to generate a pack:
guix pack -RR -S /opt/zrythm/bin=bin -L . zrythm

I then tried moving this pack to a VM running another distro
(archlinux) and all letters are shown as boxes. I have asked other
people to test it on other distros, including debian, and they reported
the same issue.

I am not exactly sure what is missing. Attaching a screenshot of what
it looks like.

I tried adding a propagated input for font-cantarell, font-gnu-freefont 
and font-dejavu just to see if it would work, without success.

Thanks,
Alex