[Fontconfig] Re: Why do asian fonts contain greek glyphs?

[mfabian at suse.de (Mike FABIAN)]

Simos Xenitellis <simos74@xxxxxxx> ????????:

> 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@xxxxxxx>   http://www.suse.de/~mfabian
?????????????