weird representation for FFFD

[P at draigBrady.com]

Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> Στις 27/Ιούν/2005, ημέρα Δευτέρα και ώρα 14:33, ο/η P at draigBrady.com
> έγραψε:
> 
>>On my fedora core 3 gnome desktop,
>>I get a weird representation for U+FFFD.
>>Here's what it looks like for you [�].
>>
>>It's the "REPLACEMENT CHARACTER", and according
>>to the following should be question mark enclosed
>>in a solid diamond: http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFFF0.pdf
>>I've been told that this is also the representation
>>on windows and OSX.
>>
>>However I'm getting a weird comma like thing, which
>>Markus Kuhn _has_ made reference to here I think:
>>http://www.w3.org/2001/06/utf-8-wrong/UTF-8-test.html
>>In the gnome charmap applet it seems to be the nimbus
>>and schoolbook (sans and serif) fallback fonts that have
>>this weird representation. The (Misc) Fixed fonts
>>do have the question mark as expected.
>>
>>So why this weird representation?
>>I'm writing an app where I would like to display
>>characters that are invalid in the current encoding,
>>and the comma like thing it totally confusing for users.
> 
> 
> Hi,
> On my system (FC2), gucharmap says it's FreeSans.
> Doesn't FC3 have FreeSans/FreeSerif/FreeMono?

Right so bitstream-vera doesn't even have the FFFD char,
and the fallback nimbus has this weird comma like thing.

I don't think freefont is part of fedora.
I installed FreeSans manually and it has a
beautiful question mark respresentation as described above.
But that's not going to work for my app unless I
install a font with it, but I really don't want to
start that messing.

> Ubuntu and other distributions come with "freefont" by default, covering
> a good range of the Unicode space.
> If FC4 does not install by default freefont, you should file a bug
> report.

Right, I'mm cc'ing fedora-devel as I've found no bugs
mentioning dejavu or freefont etc.
Extending bitstream was mentioned in this thread:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2003-December/msg00830.html
Perhaps making freefont the default might be a better approach?

What do people think?

-- 
Pádraig Brady - http://www.pixelbeat.org
--