Re: Configuring fontsets with `unicode-fonts` [Was: Re: Should minibuffer prompt be made intangible by default?]

[Alexis <flexibeast@gmail.com>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
 
>> > Installing fonts doesn't necessarily resolve the fontset 
>> > configuration problems, especially since no package can know 
>> > what other fonts are available on the end-user system.
>> 
>> Sorry, i'm not sure you understand what the `unicode-fonts` 
>> package does?
>
> I've read the code, but that doesn't necessarily mean I didn't 
> miss anything, of course.
>
> However, I did read README.md as well, and upon re-reading now 
> the text you posted, I find nothing in it that would contradict 
> what I said.

You wrote "Installing fonts doesn't ...", and didn't write 
something like "Installing fonts and then configuring them using 
that package doesn't .... "Since `unicode-fonts` doesn't actually 
install fonts, i think it wasn't entirely unreasonable of me to 
assume that you thought that the package merely installed fonts.

> My point is that, once you get to the 3rd item, no external 
> package can be the correct answer; instead, you need to teach 
> the user to configure his/her fontset according to his/her 
> preferences.  In particular, the fontset setup should be based 
> not only on Unicode blocks, but also on the capabilities of the 
> fonts present in the original system configuration, and the 
> user's preferences for using particular font(s) for displaying 
> particular ranges of characters.

Sure. On my system, `unicode-fonts` actually decided to use glyphs 
from the "Linux Biolinum" family for displaying Hebrew, which i 
found basically illegible. So my setup manually prioritises Ezra 
SIL:

    (setcdr (assoc "Hebrew" unicode-fonts-block-font-mapping) 
            '(("Ezra SIL" "Ezra SIL SR" "Arial Hebrew" "Raanana" 
            "New Peninim MT" "Aharoni" "David" "FrankRuehl" 
            "Gisha" "Levenim MT" "Narkisim" "Rod" "Cardo" "Courier 
            New" "Adobe Hebrew" "Code2000" "Aramaic Imperial Yeb" 
            "Microsoft Sans Serif" "Tahoma" "Lucida Sans Unicode" 
            "Arial Unicode MS" "Arial" "Quivira" "Everson 
            Mono:weight=boeld" "ALPHABETUM Unicode"))) 

At any rate, i've clearly misunderstood the problem - sorry! - so 
i'll bow out now.


Alexis.