[Debian-in-workers] Bug#687176: fonts-taml-udeb: Broken 'space' glyph

[Cyril Brulebois]

Package: fonts-taml-udeb
Version: 1.2.2-2
Severity: serious
Tags: d-i
Justification: Breaks Tamil display

Hi,

I've noted problems with displaying the 'space' glyph in d-i, and
managed to reproduce it outside d-i. Looking at the Samyak-Tamil.ttf it
looks to me that having 'space' as glyph #0 is a bad idea. Fontforge
says:
  0 (0x0000) U+0020 .notdef SPACE

>From past experiments at work, ISTR that glyph 0 (noted .notdef anyway)
isn't too be used, which could explain that issue.

One could probably fix this issue by “moving” that glyph to a non-0
glyph ID, keeping a dummy/not def glyph for glyph ID 0.

To reproduce the bug in a non-d-i environment, I installed fonts-taml,
used strace to locate which ttf was loaded:
  /usr/share/fonts/truetype/lohit-tamil/Lohit-Tamil.ttf

And I then overwrote this with the one shipped in the fonts-taml-udeb
udeb, then started 'yelp' with this command:
  LANGUAGE=ta_IN yelp

Screenshot attached.

It would be nice to have a fix in time for the merge window mentioned
here:
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/09/msg00196.html

Thanks for considering.

Mraw,
KiBi.
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