Arch Linux

hfenigma

Member

Registered: 2017-06-29

Posts: 30

[SOLVED] i3blocks displays weird text with the new font awesome 5

Font awesome 5 is good with i3bar and xfce4-terminal / gvim, but not with i3blocks.
See the screenshot for more information.
https://ibb.co/dPtTZw

pacaur -Qi i3blocks ttf-font-awesome
Name            : i3blocks
Version         : 1.4-6
Description     : Define blocks for your i3bar status line
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://github.com/vivien/i3blocks
Licenses        : GPL3
Groups          : i3
Provides        : None
Depends On      : None
Optional Deps   : acpi: For battery script [installed]
                  bc: For bandwidth script [installed]
                  lm_sensors: For temperature script [installed]
                  openvpn: For openvpn script
                  playerctl: For mediaplayer script
                  alsa-utils: For volume script [installed]
                  sysstat: For cpu_usage script
Required By     : None
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 98.00 KiB
Packager        : Christian Rebischke <Chris.Rebischke@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Wed 09 Aug 2017 01:01:24 AM CST
Install Date    : Sun 08 Oct 2017 01:39:02 AM CST
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

Name            : ttf-font-awesome
Version         : 5.0.2-1
Description     : Iconic font designed for Bootstrap
Architecture    : any
URL             : http://fontawesome.com
Licenses        : custom:OFL
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : fontconfig
Optional Deps   : None
Required By     : None
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 223.00 KiB
Packager        : Morten Linderud <foxboron@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Thu 28 Dec 2017 08:38:54 PM CST
Install Date    : Sat 30 Dec 2017 01:19:14 AM CST
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

Last edited by hfenigma (2018-01-10 05:33:24)

wioo

Member

Registered: 2017-05-18

Posts: 27

Re: [SOLVED] i3blocks displays weird text with the new font awesome 5

Same issue here,

bug report
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/56899?p … nt-awesome

bch24

Member

Registered: 2011-11-20

Posts: 27

Re: [SOLVED] i3blocks displays weird text with the new font awesome 5

Same issue here.

My short term solution is to uninstall and install aur package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-font-awesome-4/

sylvblck

Member

Registered: 2016-11-15

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] i3blocks displays weird text with the new font awesome 5

temporary solution:

you can put a character in the end, so the symbol disappears.
Im using dots, colon and slashes for example.
you can put a symbol in the front too, so it stays symmetric.

font-awesome 5 has a variation of new icons which I'm already using

eagle

Member

Registered: 2013-06-12

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] i3blocks displays weird text with the new font awesome 5

Another method is to add the icon/character in the blocklet script and use pango markup to enable a fallback font.

Here is an example for a bash script using echo:

echo -e "<span fallback=\"true\" font=\"Font Awesome 5 Free 12\" rise=\"-1024\">\uf028</span>"

Last edited by eagle (2018-01-10 03:55:11)

hfenigma

Member

Registered: 2017-06-29

Posts: 30

Re: [SOLVED] i3blocks displays weird text with the new font awesome 5

The problem is that font awesome 5 doesn't provide a space character anymore, and pango doesn't fallback to a font that contains a space character.
So it really is a pango bug.
We can:
1. Stay with font awesome 4
    a) downgrade if you still have the cache
    b) use the AUR package  ttf-font-awesome-4
2. Use font awesome 5, fix your other missing symbols, probably moved to Font Awesome 5 Non-free Part
     a) use otf-font-awesome
     b) use ttf-font-awesome and hope pango will fix the bug

Last edited by hfenigma (2018-01-10 06:02:00)