[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#1029707: Maybe set DejaVu Sans Mono as default font for Arabic

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Control: tags -1 - moreinfo

Hi again, Simon!

On 2023-01-26 15:50, Simon McVittie wrote:
> Another option would be to change the gnome-terminal patch so that if
> the locale is Arabic *and* the default font is either "Monospace" or
> "Ubuntu Mono", we replace it with "DejaVu Sans Mono" of the same
> size. That would be a more narrowly-scoped version that at least
> doesn't interfere with users' ability to set a different size,
> although it would still require non-upstreamable patches in multiple
> packages.

I like that approach and have now rewritten the patch:

https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-terminal/-/merge_requests/9

I chose to set "Monospace" when needed instead of specifying "DejaVu 
Sans Mono" explicitly.

As regards other packages, my thought is to limit this kind of tweak to 
the terminals we ship by default, i.e. gnome-terminal currently and 
maybe gnome-console later.

While the importance of the patch is much greater in Ubuntu (with Ubuntu 
Mono as default), personally I think it may be useful in Debian too 
after all:

* Consider an Arabic Debian user who opens Tweaks and picks some 
beautiful monospace font with e.g. the text editor in mind. With the 
patch applied, that user would not screw up the rendering of Arabic in 
gnome-terminal unknowingly.

* With the patch also in Debian, we avoid to add to the Ubuntu/Debian 
delta, which is always desirable. :)

So even if the target branch of the MR is ubuntu/master, it would be 
great if you could review it with Debian in mind. If I get a green light 
from you, I will add the patch to Debian instead.

-- 
Cheers,
Gunnar