[Fwd: Re: Request for review and advice on wqy-bitmap-fonts fontconfig settings]

[Behdad Esfahbod]

[Resending]

[Qianqian Fang]

hi Bahdad

On Nov 30, 2007 3:04 PM, Behdad Esfahbod  wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Behdad Esfahbod 
> To: Qianqian Fang 
> Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:40:04 -0500
> Subject: Re: Request for review and advice on wqy-bitmap-fonts fontconfig
> settings
> On Thu, 2007-11-29 at 19:08 -0500, Qianqian Fang wrote:
> > For zh locales, in addition to the above problem, under monospace
> > (gnome-terminal),
> > the Latin glyphs were rendered by the wqy bitmap glyphs. I expect
> > those are rendered by Dejavu Sans Mono or Bitstream Sans Mono.
>
> That's because gnome-terminal, unlike Pango, doesn't refine language
> tags passed to fontconfig based on the input text.  That is, it always
> asks fontconfig for fonts to render Chinese, even if the text is Latin.
> Can be fixed in g-t for sure, but not a high prio.  It's impossible to
> fix this with a fontconfig config.  That's what you pay when you put
> multiple scripts in a single font.

In 0.9.9-1, the following fontconfig config does work for gnome-terminal
(for both zh or non-zh locales), could you give some explanations?

<match target="pattern">
        <test equal="any" compare="eq" name="family">
                <string>WenQuanYi Bitmap Song</string>
        </test>
        <test equal="any" compare="eq" name="family">
                <string>monospace</string>
        </test>
        <edit name="family" mode="prepend">
                <string>Bitstream Vera Sans Mono</string>
        </edit>
        <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
                <string>DejaVu LGC Sans Mono</string>
        </edit>
    </match>
> > in either case, the output of
> > FC_DEBUG=4 fc-match "monospace:lang=zh-cn:pixelsize=10px"
> > always put wqy as the first one, this is not consistent with what
> > Firefox actually displayed under en locales.
>
> What do you mean "always"?  It's just one query.  Of course it prefers
> wqy: you are asking for a Chinese font and your config files make it
> prefer wqy for Chinese.

I found a problem in my original file, I meant to put DejaVu in front
of WQY bitmap Song in the "monospace" block. However, even after fixing
this, wqy-bitmap song is still listed as the first one in my fc-match output
(for
all sizes under zh-cn locale). Doesn't the first one in the <prefer> list
get higher priority to be used?
> > Can any of you help me to find out how to get around these problems?
>
> Got a question for you:  You said wqy is a fork of bitmaps from a
> TrueType font.  Why not just contribute the bitmaps back to the original
> font?

this bitmap fonts starts from Firefly bitmap font, which is licensed under
GPL.
http://www.study-area.org/apt/firefly-font/Changelog
Firefly font was integrated into Uming with some verbal permission from
Firefly.
Uming is licensed under Arphic Public License (APL), which is not compatible
with
GPL. This font was significantly expanded and improved by wqy's
contributors,
and our Copyright committee decided to stay with GPL. Therefore, merging to
Uming is not permitted by license. We also developed our own vector fonts,
one of the first release is wqy-zenhei-fonts (currently in Fedora). Zenhei
embedded the bitmap glyphs for about 20400 characters out of 27842
characters
in wqy-bitmap-fonts (those missing are due to the lack of outline data).
Comparing to uming, it only has ~16000 char containing bitmap glyphs.

I did not find in your reply: do you have any thought on why the
last two match blocks (replacing wqy bitmap font by Uming for large/small
sizes)
does not work?

thanks

Qianqian