Arch Linux

fatpenguin

Member

Registered: 2022-03-13

Posts: 17

window decorations not rendering emojis

Hi, I am running Arch with Openbox on a HP Laptop with Intel Celeron 2x2.8 Ghz CPU and Intel GeminiLake UHD 600 GPU
Following a fresh install, the title bar of the window only shows letters but not emojis. I have installed Noto fonts emojis, then Twemojis, then Symbola fonts but I keep seeing empty spaces (but not tofu squares). Also, the Chromium browser renders emojis in the web pages and in its own tabs, though partly colored partly b&w.
The things I have tried so far:
- disabled anr re-enabled hinting;
- switched fonts from Liberation to DejaVu;
- created a .font.conf file according to https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions … correctly/.
Though more of a cosmetical issue than anything else, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by fatpenguin (2022-03-15 13:06:00)

fatpenguin

Member

Registered: 2022-03-13

Posts: 17

Re: window decorations not rendering emojis

It looks like I have messed up things even more. After running "fc-cache -v -f" even emojis in the terminal and in the browser tabs are in black&white. Of course, the WM title bar still doesn't render any emoji.
Installing Noto Fonts didn't make any difference. I forgot to say that I haven't DejaVu fonts installed either.
I think that the system overrides the Noto emojis and falls back to something else, but have no idea how to inspect this further.

Last edited by fatpenguin (2022-03-14 12:31:26)

zorousesarch

Member

Registered: 2021-10-20

Posts: 1

Re: window decorations not rendering emojis

AFAIK, you can install an emoji-specific or nerd font using

sudo pacman -S <font name>

or an AUR helper. After that update the system and specify the exact font name in your WM config file(s). You can also add the fonts in your browser settings (about:preferences). Make sure you have uncommented the right locales for English US. This has worked well for me in the past. Additionally, check this and this and this. You can use whatever font you're using and set a nerd/emoji font as a fallback. Some good fonts are Iosevka, Awesome.

Have you tried anything else?

fatpenguin

Member

Registered: 2022-03-13

Posts: 17

Re: window decorations not rendering emojis

hey @zorousearch, thanks for your reply, I had already installed the noto-fonts-emoji from the AUR, and unfortuntaley the only configuration file that partially worked was the one from the first link. However, it only set the colored emoji in the browser tabs, while the Openbox title bars were totally unaffected. I have tried to install other fotns like the ones you suggested but no difference.
UPDATE: I figured out that emoji picker works perfectly if I try to add an emoji to,say, the file manager. So it looks like it's only an issue affecting the WM window decoration, I have renamed the thread accordingly.
Something else I tried was switching to another Openbox theme, but it didn' work.

Last edited by fatpenguin (2022-03-15 13:05:42)