From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Suggest installing more fonts? Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2020 14:07:55 +0300 Message-ID: <83y2k6v378.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87wnzqa1be.fsf@gnus.org> Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="15539"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Lars Ingebrigtsen Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri Oct 16 13:08:35 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kTNb9-0003xG-9E for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 16 Oct 2020 13:08:35 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:46216 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kTNb8-00037i-1M for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 16 Oct 2020 07:08:34 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:53584) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kTNaa-0002ek-O8 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 16 Oct 2020 07:08:01 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:53714) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kTNaZ-0005tU-Dw; Fri, 16 Oct 2020 07:08:00 -0400 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=1059 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1kTNaX-0007gr-Hk; Fri, 16 Oct 2020 07:07:59 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87wnzqa1be.fsf@gnus.org> (message from Lars Ingebrigtsen on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 12:54:13 +0200) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:257794 Archived-At: > From: Lars Ingebrigtsen > Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2020 12:54:13 +0200 > > I think, over the years, the most common question users have that has an > easy-to-fix solution is: "Why is Emacs displaying boxes for some of > these characters I'm seeing?" The solution is "install some more > fonts", of course. > > But could Emacs be more helpful here? That is, could we somehow, > unobtrusively, tell the users this when Emacs is trying to display a > character that it has no fonts for? That box with the hex code is our way of telling the users that. What else can be better, given that there could be more than one such character? > For added helpfulness, would it be possible for Emacs to be even more > specific? Like, say "sudo apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji > fonts-symbola", or whatever, depending on the system. For that, you'd need a database of fonts per OS and per release (and I think on GNU systems this will have to depend on the distro as well?), and you'd need to maintain that database. Who around here knows enough about fonts on different systems to maintain such a database? > Fonts change over the years, so this would be an added maintenance > burden... but they don't change a lot: New general-use fonts with good > coverage aren't created very often. IME, the fonts do change quite a lot between releases. > (Perhaps distribution packagers could also push more fonts as part of > the Emacs installation, but that'd probably be more controversial.) Yes, it's the responsibility of the distro to make sure the necessary fonts are installed when Emacs is installed. If MS-Windows can have all the fonts to cover the supported scripts, so can GNU/Linux distros. They should make sure each Emacs user has fonts to cover all the scripts known to Emacs. I think the best we can do here is (a) add more fonts to the default fontset (it isn't trivial, as quite a few good fonts aren't free); and (b) have a command to report which of the fonts mentioned in the default fontset aren't available.