Re: (re)display problems after font backend merge

[David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>]

Stephen Berman wrote:

> -Adobe-Adobe Helvetica-normal-normal-normal-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
> 
> The output includes Adobe Helvetica but not the other two fonts above
> (though B&H Lucida, B&H LucidaBright, and B&H LucidaTypewriter are
> listed).
>

I guess the filenames all ended in .pcf or .pcf.gz ? If so, they're all
fonts that ship as bitmaps with X. Yours apparently have the foundry
names prepended in the family though, which might be some sort of policy
change that I haven't encountered yet.

Of course they shouldn't be showing up at all if you've successfully
disabled bitmap fonts.  Huh.

> If either of these is right, it doesn't shed any light on why Emacs uses
> DejaVu Sans and b&h-Lucida Sans for faces derived from variable-pitch in
> my cases.
> 

Guess not.

But - bah. That "helv" (rather than "helvetica") that is in emacs'
variable-pitch's family by default is IMO unlikely to do anything
particularly sensible (unlike the "courier" default in fixed-pitch) -
"helv" is neither the name of a font nor an alias in fontconfig as far
as I can see, and family matching is not AFAICS substring-based in
fontconfig.

I had actively set my variable-pitch face to DejaVu Sans.  Are you
resetting it or leaving it default?


Since "helv" doesn't match anything, the decision is probably down
to other factors, like charsets covered or phase of the moon e.g.

helv:

fc-match helv:lang=ie => Vera.ttf: "Bitstream Vera Sans" "Roman"
fc-match helv:lang=ru => DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
fc-match helv:lang=ja => sazanami-gothic.ttf: "Sazanami Gothic" "Regular"

silly name (as you can see, same results as helv):

fc-match wheresmyjumper:lang=ie => Vera.ttf: "Bitstream Vera Sans" "Roman"
fc-match wheresmyjumper:lang=ru => DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
fc-match wheresmyjumper:lang=ja => sazanami-gothic.ttf: "Sazanami
Gothic" "Regular"

helvetica, apparently using the substitutions James Cloos mentioned:

fc-match helvetica:lang=ie => n019003l.pfb: "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"
fc-match helvetica:lang=ru => n019003l.pfb: "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"
fc-match helvetica:lang=ja => n019003l.pfb: "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"


*** So perhaps emacs should default to "helvetica" for variable-pitch
if it's gonna default to "courier" for fixed-pitch.   Then fontconfig
might have a chance. :-)