Hi
Thanks for your input on this Iñaki and Nicolas.
I am starting testing an R fix for this problem today.
As suggested, the plan is to allow the R user to specify a font family
other than "symbol" for plotmath output (or, more generally, in R
parlance, for 'font=5' or 'fontface=5') on a Cairo-based graphics device.
Paul
On 27/03/20 11:30 pm, Iñaki Ucar wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 12:25, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mail...@laposte.net> wrote:
<snip>
R brought this all on itself by hardcoding a Windows-only “Symbol” font
family name in its default conf. Linux systems are UTF-8 by default for
~20 years now, they don’t need the forcing of magic font families to
handle symbols not present in the 8-bit legacy Windows encodings.
The actual effect of this conf is not the selection of font files with
special and unusual symbols. It is to priorize fonts that match the
"Symbol" magic name. And those fonts are few and crumbling on Linux
systems, because no one has needed to bother with them since Linux
switched to UTF-8 last millenium.
Just stop using “Symbol” in R and things will work a lot better.
Alternatively, prepare to maintain the “Symbol” aliasing stack in
fontconfig (and fight with wine for it), because *no* *one* *else*
*cares* about this legacy Windows-specific stuff.
So, in the light of Nicolas' input (thanks!), I think that font
selection should be fixed upstream in R. I'd be happy to put all this
together in R's bugzilla, but I don't have an account. Could someone
please invite me?
Iñaki
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