Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

NullRoute · 2019-07-28 04:25:33

With latest updates, some fonts no longer work at all. All I see is some squares. One good example is terminus-font. Another issue is with GIMP now, you can't do any font alighnment up/down (Adjust line spacing) with any fonts. What can cause this? I don't mind downgrading some packages if this will fix it. Just point me in the right direction please.

Last edited by jasonwryan (2019-07-28 15:57:31)

jasonwryan · 2019-07-28 04:42:41

What updates? Paste your full pacman log. Also, read this: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way and try and include relevant information when you ask for help.

Moving to NC...

andrewclive · 2019-07-28 06:18:00

I think I have the same problem as the OP as regards the terminus font rendering as rectangles, and it is caused by the latest update to pango. If you downgrade the pango package then the terminus font is fine. There was a bug report but it has been closed because it is "intentional" https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63297?p … ring=pango.

Vain · 2019-07-28 07:39:19

FYI: I just opened an issue at Pango's tracker -- basically asking the guys what we should do:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/issues/386

madscience · 2019-07-28 15:11:25

I have the same issue in any application which uses pango - in my case just dunst and i3, using the Tamzen font. I've downgraded pango for now.

jenic · 2019-07-28 18:40:09

Specifically in regards to i3, I now reference Terminus without pango which seems to work fine without downgrading. GIMP still has issues using Terminus but at least my status bar is readable. Specifically, my config change was:

font pango:xos4 Terminus, DejaVu Sans Mono, monospace 10

changed to:

# Do not reference bitmap fonts through pango:
font -xos4-terminus-*-*-normal-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Hope that helps someone!

progandy · 2019-07-28 20:29:27

For terminus, you can fall back to terminus-font-ttf in the AUR. This font should embed the bitmaps in a TTF file that can be read by the new pango. It seems you can create a bitmap-ttf for other fonts using the mkttf tool built for converting terminus. Then use the resulting ttf with your pango/harfbuzz applications and choose a font size that will display the embedded bitmaps perfectly.

https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/#mkttf

If you have a font in pcf format, then you can convert it with pcf2bdf (in the AUR) first, or maybe you can convert them directly if you modify the script.

Last edited by progandy (2019-07-28 20:30:39)

Arlefreak · 2019-07-29 06:01:23

I used https://github.com/rsms/inter changed from "Inter UI" to "Inter" in all config files and the text is rendering again, not sure if related.

mountaineerbr · 2019-07-31 16:24:09

Thanks, this thread is very helpful. I have been looking for this for a few days already.

It is hard to find stuff here sometimes, specially when moderators close
new topics without very helpful pointers, maybe they should wait a little before deletion because
there are many nice people about that do not mind pointing to the source topic...

xos4 Terminus is the only font I can see clearly.. Maybe, if I buy new glasses, that would help, too.

I will try doing these procedures..

Cheers!

PS: AUR Terminus pkg works very well for me.
thanks all!

Last edited by mountaineerbr (2019-07-31 16:30:09)

madscience · 2019-07-31 16:27:21

I use tamzen as my terminal/wm/notification font and luckily on tamzen's git repo there's a ttf version. I set the font size to 11.5 and it matches up perfectly with 14px tamzen bitmap. I know there's a ttf version of terminus, maybe try that?

Last edited by madscience (2019-07-31 16:44:11)

ewaller · 2019-07-31 16:42:19

mountaineerbr wrote:

It is hard to find stuff here sometimes, specially when moderators close
new topics without very helpful pointers, maybe they should wait a little before deletion because
there are many nice people about that do not mind pointing to the source topic...

Well, I did send you a link via email. Took me less than a minute to find it for you and send it.

jouke · 2019-07-31 16:54:25

While the PCF file format for bitmap fonts is no longer supported by pango/harfbuzz, another format is supported. This is the OpenType Bitmap (OTB) format. I have used the original terminus sources to prepare a package that uses this newer format. It is available at this GitHub Gist.

I have mailed the author of terminus with the suggestion to switch from PCF to OTB.

karabaja4 · 2019-07-31 21:25:43

Pango 1.44 also seems to introduce some spacing bugs in some fonts. Notably Roboto looks horrible now.

progandy · 2019-07-31 21:55:01

karabaja4 wrote:

Pango 1.44 also seems to introduce some spacing bugs in some fonts. Notably Roboto looks horrible now.

Maybe that is because of the changes in subpixel positioning which will need cairo master for best results?
https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/07 … hment_3728

Edit: I found the original tool created for converting BDF/PCF to OTB:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/fonttosfnt
The original proposal of the format: https://www.irif.fr/~jch//software/xfre … fonts.html

Last edited by progandy (2019-07-31 23:30:37)

resettik · 2019-08-01 13:32:50

jouke wrote:

While the PCF file format for bitmap fonts is no longer supported by pango/harfbuzz, another format is supported. This is the OpenType Bitmap (OTB) format. I have used the original terminus sources to prepare a package that uses this newer format. It is available at this GitHub Gist.
I have mailed the author of terminus with the suggestion to switch from PCF to OTB.

Big thanks for this package! Just in case author will ignore this request, could you please describe how you did this conversion, so in worst case we can create AUR package for it.

liara · 2019-08-01 14:27:24

One could also convert to otb with fontforge as suggested in the Pango issue linked by @Vain, like https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/ … a-font-otb Thanks @progandy for the AUR fonttosfnr package!

Last edited by liara (2019-08-01 14:28:39)

karabaja4 · 2019-08-01 19:53:09

progandy wrote:

Maybe that is because of the changes in subpixel positioning which will need cairo master for best results?
https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/07 … hment_3728

Thanks, tried cairo-git from AUR, seems better. Spacing seems more consistent, not as good as with pango 1.43 but at least I can read it.

NullRoute · 2019-08-02 07:27:23

First of all thank you all for your help, I knew I was not the only one who had this issues.

@jasonwryan, You never seem to know what is going on around the fourm. I explained everything the best I could, and everyone else seem to understand it except you LOL

Everyone else, thank you so much for your help!

Last edited by NullRoute (2019-08-02 07:31:09)

jasonwryan · 2019-08-02 08:13:50

NullRoute wrote:

@jasonwryan, You never seem to know what is going on around the fourm. I explained everything the best I could, and everyone else seem to understand it except you LOL

Everyone else understood it because they experienced it and were able to read their pacman log. I couldn't read yours and neither, it seems, could you.

Closing

EndUserOnly · 2019-08-02 14:17:34

Okay so I am linux-hardened, running on LXDE. After closely following the post initiated by NullRoute, I did the following: (note: the terminus font was not on my system prior to these steps)

1) installed the terminus font from member jouke.
2)edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf and included the path to the new terminus font in the Files Section.
3)"#xset q" confirmed that terminus was now being recognized by Xorg.
4) Changed font to terminus in Openbox, Desktop Preferences, and LXTerminal.
5) Upgraded pango.

The only success I had was with LXTerminal the characters were back, except the file menu.

Also, pacman now displays that my terminus font is newer than community, every time I run pacman.

I can see that the terminus font is now in use in all desktop windows. Yet the new pango only works with LXTerminal. Actually, I keep a spare everything on my system for times like these. Pango never affected Xterm, or XFE. That was my goto when I lost my letters, which are not displaying as square, but blanks. I typed into lxterminal the command without sight, and brought up xterm which was not affected. Weston is also not impacted. I could bring-up Weston and run everything from there.

I have never touched my fonts before this, always accepted the system defaults. I have done extensive research - the Internet agrees that a change has been made by Pango. As I do not have experience with fonts, I decided that using joukes terminus font was the easiest way to do the least damage to my system.

I am still stuck, unable to upgrade pango. And of course eventually somebody will do an upgrade that requires a specific version of pango, probably LibreOffice very shortly - then I will be fully screwed. I have also looked into Graphite as a possible alternative, but there are a lot of dependencies that require pango.

I was watching NullRoute's post closely for additional options, but then it go closed.

Any suggestions? (Please note this is posted under "Newbie Corner")

Last edited by EndUserOnly (2019-08-02 14:55:39)

ewaller · 2019-08-02 14:48:33

I am merging post 20 from another thread and am reopening this thread to keep the discussion in one place. Please keep this on topic.

tritonas00 · 2019-08-04 23:25:11

karabaja4 wrote:

progandy wrote:
Maybe that is because of the changes in subpixel positioning which will need cairo master for best results?
https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/07 … hment_3728
Thanks, tried cairo-git from AUR, seems better. Spacing seems more consistent, not as good as with pango 1.43 but at least I can read it.

I have the same issue with roboto, reported here https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/issues/404

aussieevil · 2019-08-07 07:33:46

This is extremely frustrating. Are all the pixel fonts in the repository going to be upgraded soon to be pango-compatible?

EndUserOnly · 2019-08-08 14:59:56

Arch just upgraded the terminus-font-otb, mentioned above as a potential fix. I have no intention of using it though, do not like the font. During my troubleshooting I came across the best font ever; ttf-Linux-Libertine-G. I installed it because it is a Graphite port of Linux-Libertine. Graphite is an alternative to Pango. It did not help my problem, but it is the best font I have ever used. I have no intention of giving it up.

For me the latest Cairo upgraded my problem. I now see the squares instead of blanks, mentioned in the original post. I also think the desktop you are using matters. Unfortunately, the original posters did not give that info. I use LXDE, and I am not sure it is still being developed in such a way to lend itself to some of the fixes. But I am not giving-up LXDE either.

hicolour · 2019-08-09 17:33:16

I started having the same issue - squares - in the same exact time in roxterm and rofi launcher, it needs to be soemthing else causing issue across different apps.

Can you cofirm the squares you were talking is something like this https://ibb.co/592Zc9j ?

Last edited by hicolour (2019-08-09 17:44:57)

Arch Linux

#1 2019-07-28 04:25:33

Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#2 2019-07-28 04:42:41

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#3 2019-07-28 06:18:00

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#4 2019-07-28 07:39:19

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#5 2019-07-28 15:11:25

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#6 2019-07-28 18:40:09

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#7 2019-07-28 20:29:27

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#8 2019-07-29 06:01:23

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#9 2019-07-31 16:24:09

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#10 2019-07-31 16:27:21

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#11 2019-07-31 16:42:19

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#12 2019-07-31 16:54:25

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#13 2019-07-31 21:25:43

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#14 2019-07-31 21:55:01

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#15 2019-08-01 13:32:50

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#16 2019-08-01 14:27:24

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#17 2019-08-01 19:53:09

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#18 2019-08-02 07:27:23

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#19 2019-08-02 08:13:50

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#20 2019-08-02 14:17:34

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#21 2019-08-02 14:48:33

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#22 2019-08-04 23:25:11

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#23 2019-08-07 07:33:46

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#24 2019-08-08 14:59:56

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

#25 2019-08-09 17:33:16

Re: Pango update: bitmap fonts display as squares

Board footer