Font setting issue in recent emacs dev version

Font setting issue in recent emacs dev version

[Tim Cross]

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Emacs developers

Have encountered a font issue in recent dev emacs and wanted to verify it
isn't due to a known change before creating a bug report.

The basic issue is that setting a default font in my init file doesn't seem
to work. However, executing the same code in the scratch buffer after boot
does set the font. This problem was encountered today after pulling from
current HEAD. The previous version, from just after eglot was merged, works
fine, so it seems to be due to something which has changed in the last
couple of weeks.

I have an init.el file which consists of only

(set-face-attribute 'default nil :family "Victor Mono" :height 280 :weight
'light)

(custom-set-variables
 ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
 ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
 ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 )
(custom-set-faces
 ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
 ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
 ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 )

Running current HEAD version I get the following for describe-face default

Face: default (sample) (customize this face)

Documentation:
Basic default face.

Defined in ‘faces.el’.


           Family: Noto Sans Mono
          Foundry: GOOG
            Width: normal
           Height: 158
           Weight: regular
            Slant: normal
       Foreground: black
DistantForeground: unspecified
       Background: white
        Underline: nil
         Overline: nil
   Strike-through: nil
              Box: nil
          Inverse: nil
          Stipple: nil
             Font: #<font-object -GOOG-Noto Sans
Mono-regular-normal-normal-*-21-*-*-*-*-0-iso10646-1>
          Fontset: -GOOG-Noto Sans
Mono-regular-normal-normal-*-21-*-*-*-*-0-fontset-startup
          Extend: nil
          Inherit: nil

With Emacs built from the version after merge of eglot
(rev. 83fbda715973f57dc49fe0) and same init.el file, describe-face default
gives me

Face: default (sample) (customize this face)

Documentation:
Basic default face.

Defined in ‘faces.el’.


           Family: Victor Mono
          Foundry: UKWN
            Width: normal
           Height: 279
           Weight: light
            Slant: normal
       Foreground: black
DistantForeground: unspecified
       Background: white
        Underline: nil
         Overline: nil
   Strike-through: nil
              Box: nil
          Inverse: nil
          Stipple: nil
             Font: #<font-object -UKWN-Victor
Mono-light-normal-normal-*-37-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1>
          Fontset: -UKWN-Victor
Mono-light-normal-normal-*-37-*-*-*-m-0-fontset-auto3
           Extend: nil
          Inherit: nil

This is on Fedora 36 using lucid toolkit.

Is this due to some change associated with set-face-attribute or some new
bug which needs a bug report?

-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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Re: Font setting issue in recent emacs dev version

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 14:10:15 +1100
> 
>    Emacs developers  
> Have encountered a font issue in recent dev emacs and wanted to verify it isn't due to a known change before
> creating a bug report. 

Please in the future report any problems as bugs, so that they are
recorded by the issue tracker.

> The basic issue is that setting a default font in my init file doesn't seem to work. However, executing the same
> code in the scratch buffer after boot does set the font. This problem was encountered today after pulling from
> current HEAD. The previous version, from just after eglot was merged, works fine, so it seems to be due to
> something which has changed in the last couple of weeks. 

The only change since 83fbda715973f57dc49fe0 that could be somehow
relevant is the one that touches the support for XSETTINGS on some
configurations.  (If you had reported this as a bug, the bug report
would have included the details of your configuration, and I could
then see if those changes could be relevant, instead of
hypothesizing.)  If that is indeed the offending changeset, then I
guess the issue has something to do with your system-wide font
settings.

In any case, bisection would be appreciated.

> Is this due to some change associated with set-face-attribute or some new bug which needs a bug report?

It doesn't matter; please always report such things as bugs.  Having a
bug number and all its discussion easily traceable makes tracking such
issues much easier.

Thanks.

Re: Font setting issue in recent emacs dev version

[Tim Cross]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 14:10:15 +1100
>> 
>>    Emacs developers  
>> Have encountered a font issue in recent dev emacs and wanted to verify it isn't due to a known change before
>> creating a bug report. 
>
> Please in the future report any problems as bugs, so that they are
> recorded by the issue tracker.
>

OK, if that is the preference, I will. Was just trying to avoid
cluttering the bug tracker with non-bugs.

>> The basic issue is that setting a default font in my init file doesn't seem to work. However, executing the same
>> code in the scratch buffer after boot does set the font. This problem was encountered today after pulling from
>> current HEAD. The previous version, from just after eglot was merged, works fine, so it seems to be due to
>> something which has changed in the last couple of weeks. 
>
> The only change since 83fbda715973f57dc49fe0 that could be somehow
> relevant is the one that touches the support for XSETTINGS on some
> configurations.  (If you had reported this as a bug, the bug report
> would have included the details of your configuration, and I could
> then see if those changes could be relevant, instead of
> hypothesizing.)  If that is indeed the offending changeset, then I
> guess the issue has something to do with your system-wide font
> settings.
>
> In any case, bisection would be appreciated.
>

OK, will try to bisect further and if it turns out to not be a local
configuration problem or I cannot identify the cause, will log a bug
report. 

Re: Font setting issue in recent emacs dev version

[Po Lu]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> The only change since 83fbda715973f57dc49fe0 that could be somehow
> relevant is the one that touches the support for XSETTINGS on some
> configurations.  (If you had reported this as a bug, the bug report
> would have included the details of your configuration, and I could
> then see if those changes could be relevant, instead of
> hypothesizing.)  If that is indeed the offending changeset, then I
> guess the issue has something to do with your system-wide font
> settings.
>
> In any case, bisection would be appreciated.

Indeed.  If you haven't changed your display scale settings with Emacs
running, I fail to see how the xsettings changes could be related.

Re: Font setting issue in recent emacs dev version

[Tim Cross]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> The only change since 83fbda715973f57dc49fe0 that could be somehow
>> relevant is the one that touches the support for XSETTINGS on some
>> configurations.  (If you had reported this as a bug, the bug report
>> would have included the details of your configuration, and I could
>> then see if those changes could be relevant, instead of
>> hypothesizing.)  If that is indeed the offending changeset, then I
>> guess the issue has something to do with your system-wide font
>> settings.
>>
>> In any case, bisection would be appreciated.
>
> Indeed.  If you haven't changed your display scale settings with Emacs
> running, I fail to see how the xsettings changes could be related.

This has turned out a little intriguing.

Based on Eli's suggestion it could be a local X setting issue, I
rebooted and ran 'fc-cache -v' and the issue seems to have gone away.

It would seem that something which has changed between revision
83fbda715973f5 and revision ce527464440ca070e752c has made Emacs more
'sensitive' to local font settings issues. Unfortunately, there is
nothing in the messages buffer or journalctl logs which sheds any light
on what the underlying issue was. 

Prior to the reboot, Emacs from the earlier revision had no problems
loading the font I was requesting (it is a font installed within the
user's local font directory).  However, later revisions failed and fell
back to a Noto font. I was able to reproduce this behaviour reliably
using an init.el file which only had the set-face-attribute setting.

Since the reboot and running of fc-cache, I can no longer reproduce the
issue, so I guess it will remain an unexplained mystery.