GNU bug report logs - #41344
Font broken in GUI application with guix pack

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alexandros Theodotou <alex <at> zrythm.org>
To: bug-guix <at> gnu.org
Subject: Font broken in GUI application with guix pack
Date: Sun, 17 May 2020 05:05:39 +0100

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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

[Screenshot from 2020-05-16 20-11-20.png (image/png, attachment)]

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Message #8 received at 41344 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
To: Alexandros Theodotou <alex <at> zrythm.org>
Cc: 41344 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#41344: Font broken in GUI application with guix pack
Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 15:43:11 +0200

Hi,

Alexandros Theodotou <alex <at> zrythm.org> skribis:

> 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.

Did it work roughly before the ‘core-updates’ merge?

Our ‘fontconfig’ package searches ~/.guix-profile/share/fonts and
/run/current-system/profile/share/fonts by default, which obviously
doesn’t work on foreign distros.

As discussed on IRC, could you check “strace -f” the program and check
where it’s looking for fonts (TTFs?)?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Message #11 received at 41344 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alexandros Theodotou <alex <at> zrythm.org>
To: Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 41344 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#41344: Font broken in GUI application with guix pack
Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 18:49:00 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

> Did it work roughly before the ‘core-updates’ merge?

This is the first time I tried `guix pack` so I don't know.

> As discussed on IRC, could you check “strace -f” the program and
> check
> where it’s looking for fonts (TTFs?)?

I'm not really sure what to look for. Here is the strace -f output: 
https://www.zrythm.org/downloads/trace.text.tar.gz

The package I'm trying to pack is zrythm-next from here:
https://git.zrythm.org/cgit/guix-repo/tree/audio.scm

Thanks,
Alex

On Tue, 2020-05-19 at 15:43 +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Our ‘fontconfig’ package searches ~/.guix-profile/share/fonts and
> /run/current-system/profile/share/fonts by default, which obviously
> doesn’t work on foreign distros.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.

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Message #14 received at 41344 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Marius Bakke <mbakke <at> fastmail.com>
To: Alexandros Theodotou <alex <at> zrythm.org>, 41344 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#41344: Font broken in GUI application with guix pack
Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 20:11:20 +0200

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Alexandros Theodotou <alex <at> zrythm.org> writes:

> 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.

Can you try the patch posted at
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-05/msg00281.html> ?

When no fonts are installed in the common Guix profiles, applications
only "see" the font hard-coded into fontconfig, which happens to be
broken[*] since the recent 'core-updates' merge for any application
using Pango (such as GTK+).

[*] because fontconfig currently uses "gs-fonts", which are bitmap only,
and Pango no longer supports bitmap fonts[**]
[**] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/issues/386

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Message #19 received at 41344-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Marius Bakke <mbakke <at> fastmail.com>
To: Leo Famulari <leo <at> famulari.name>
Cc: guix-devel <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] gnu: fontconfig: Add replacement with font-dejavu instead
 of gs-fonts.
Date: Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:39 +0200

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Leo Famulari <leo <at> famulari.name> 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.  ;-)

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