[arch-general] Odd unicode glyph rendering issues

[Mark Raynsford]

Hello!

On 2022-04-04T17:51:30 +0100
Ralph Corderoy via arch-general <arch-general at lists.archlinux.org>
wrote:

> No, it sounds like the same search for a font was configured on both and
> the search resulted in a different font.  Have you perused 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fonts ?

Success! It turns out there was an old copy of IBM Plex Sans lurking in
one of the directories that fontconfig inspects (revealed by fc-cache).
It resulted in this on the working machine:

$ fc-match -s ':charset=3072'
IBMPlexSansJP-Regular.ttf: "IBM Plex Sans JP" "Regular"
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold"
DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Oblique"
DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold Oblique"
NimbusSans-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Sans" "Regular"
IBMPlexSans-Regular.ttf: "IBM Plex Sans" "Regular"
DejaVuMathTeXGyre.ttf: "DejaVu Math TeX Gyre" "Regular"
DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"
DejaVuSerif.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Book"
LiberationMono-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Mono" "Regular"
LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Serif" "Regular"
SourceCodePro-Regular.otf: "Source Code Pro" "Regular"
D050000L.otf: "D050000L" "Regular"
IBMPlexSansArabic-Regular.ttf: "IBM Plex Sans Arabic" "Regular"
IBMPlexSansDevanagari-Regular.ttf: "IBM Plex Sans Devanagari" "Regular"
IBMPlexSansThai-Regular.ttf: "IBM Plex Sans Thai" "Regular"
IBMPlexSansKR-Regular.ttf: "IBM Plex Sans KR" "Regular"
Cantarell-VF.otf: "Cantarell" "Regular"
DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Bold"
DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Bold"
DejaVuSerif-Italic.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Italic"
LiberationSerif-Italic.ttf: "Liberation Serif" "Italic"

$ fc-match -s ':charset=3072'
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold"
DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Oblique"
DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold Oblique"
NimbusSans-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Sans" "Regular"
DejaVuMathTeXGyre.ttf: "DejaVu Math TeX Gyre" "Regular"
DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"
DejaVuSerif.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Book"
LiberationMono-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Mono" "Regular"
LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Serif" "Regular"
SourceCodePro-Regular.otf: "Source Code Pro" "Regular"
D050000L.otf: "D050000L" "Regular"
Cantarell-VF.otf: "Cantarell" "Regular"
DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Bold"
DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Bold"
DejaVuSerif-Italic.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Italic"
LiberationSerif-Italic.ttf: "Liberation Serif" "Italic"

Looks like I was getting Hiragana glyphs from Plex, but every other
character was being rendered using DejaVuSans. Both machines had been
configured to use "DejaVuSans Mono Book 9" for years, but DejaVu
doesn't contain many CJK glyphs.

Thanks for prodding me in the right direction!

-- 
Mark Raynsford | https://www.io7m.com