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: Sat, 17 Oct 2020 10:46:23 +0300 Message-ID: <83zh4lthv4.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87wnzqa1be.fsf@gnus.org> Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="7086"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: larsi@gnus.org, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Gregory Heytings Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sat Oct 17 09:47:36 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 1kTgwC-0001l9-3K for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2020 09:47:36 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34142 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kTgwB-00076R-67 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2020 03:47:35 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:40788) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kTgv4-0006R8-Vy for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2020 03:46:27 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:52062) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kTgv2-0007Ez-DF; Sat, 17 Oct 2020 03:46:25 -0400 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=1525 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1kTgv1-0000eO-KZ; Sat, 17 Oct 2020 03:46:24 -0400 In-Reply-To: (emacs-devel@gnu.org) 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:257924 Archived-At: > Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2020 23:02:37 +0000 > cc: Lars Ingebrigtsen , emacs-devel@gnu.org > From: Gregory Heytings via "Emacs development discussions." > > > I know. I was just pointing out that there are several problems > > (missing fonts is one of them, but not the only one), so before trying > > to solve "the problem", we should be clear about which one it is and try > > and figure out whether it's indeed the most common. > > A user has (usually) no idea of these "several problems", and knows even > less how to fix them. For such users the problem is simply "Emacs > displays gibberish". That is "the problem" IMO. Everything else are > technicalities that very few know/understand/have the patience to deal > with. > > So IMO for these users it would be much better to display characters with > a low-resolution font, together with a warning (and perhaps a pointer to a > short guide) (as a help-echo and/or in the echo area), instead of a tofu. Then the problem will become "Emacs uses an ugly font where other apps don't", and we are none the wiser. IMO, we should try fixing whatever problems are there (and AFAIU there's more than one) without using ugly fonts. For example, problems with displaying Emoji are due to some missing infrastructure (see a separate discussion about that), and once we add that, the result will be much better than anything you could get with Unifont. IOW, using Unifont is simply a kind of admission of defeat: we don't really know why Emacs doesn't find a good font, so we take the easy path of providing _some_ font that will always work, albeit show ugly glyphs. I see no need to declare defeat, as we have facilities in Emacs to solve these problems in a better way, once we understand them. We should therefore try to understand the problems better, and once understood, solve them properly.