Re: Fontset problem

[Kenichi Handa <handa@m17n.org>]

In article <200209261448.g8QEmU915967@rum.cs.yale.edu>, "Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/emacs@rum.cs.yale.edu> writes:
> Faces have both a `font' property (which specifies a fontset or
> a specific font) and a `family' property.
> Typically the `font' is set once and for all in the `default' face
> and is not touched by any other face: they set their `family'
> property instead.

> For some reason, the `default' face initializes its `family' property
> not to `unspecified' but to the name of the `font', which will thus
> stupidly override any other family setting in the fontset.  I think
> that's the bug.

I don't think so.  The font related properties of the
`default' face is decided by a font Emacs uses for a frame,
and that font specifies all font related properties.  That
way, it is assured that the other faces inheriting font
realted properties from the `default' face use the same
font.   I think that is the design policy of xfaces.c.

The current problem is that the role of family part
sepecified in a fontset is not clear; is it just giving a
fallback default, or is it to override the normal font
selection mechanism?

Previously, as people didn't have that many non-Latin-1
fonts, the above was not that big problem because the face
family almost always failed (especially for CJK fonts), thus
the fontset family was used if specified.

But, now, there are many variations of non-Latin-1 fonts,
and incomplete iso10646 fonts make the situation worse.  So,
until we implement a better font selection mechanism for
multibyte characters, people need a way to override the
current font selection mechanism.  First of all, such family
names as courier, times, etc are applicable only to Latin
fonts.

I agree that my latest change is not a complete solution,
but it's a quick workaround to solve the current problem.
People who are satisfied with the current font selector
don't have to specify a family part in a fontset.  So, if it
is specified, I think it is better to regard it a sign of a
request to override the current font selector.

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
handa@m17n.org