Re: Suggest installing more fonts?

[Gregory Heytings via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>]

>>> I have seen several questions about Emacs showing tofu where the user
>>> points out that such-and-such other application displays that same text
>>> just fine on the same system.
>>
>> This depends on many parameters, most of which are outside Emacs' 
>> control.
>
> 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.