Great, thanks.
Am gonna open bug reports at Google’s GitHub about the issues I had in the font, and then hope Debian can pull a newer version containing the fixes.
Best.
2 Likes
Thank you 
@gunnarhj for answering my question at
askubuntu.com/a/1280821/1134233
I see you’ve made good progress, well done!
I’ve seen this issue come up again and again with Foss software trying to choose a good typeface for the Arabic script but it is hard!
Here is another example: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/7840
There are many types of texts as you mentioned before: button, menus, deskrop UI, articles, books, wikis …etc. So it is really hard to have an option that will fit all, choosing anything will be a compromise to at least one category.
Also remember that there are simply a dozen or so of languages that write in the Arabic script so it hard to find a typeface that supports most if not all of them and open-source.
In the telegram issue above there are other interesting typefaces that are not mentioned here. They are open-source and also well crafted, but not packages for debian.
I have used Noto Naskh Arabic{, UI}, Noto Sans Arabic{, UI}, IBM Plex Arabic, Sahel, Vazir, Kacst, Amiri, Cairo … and many more before (btw all are open-source 
). but it’s been almost 2 years that I’m using Sahel exclusively. IMO it is the best option that does not compromise as much as the others. it is lightweight and there is a version that does not include Latin-glyphs, the developer is receptive to suggestion and fixes. There is even a variable version if it ever get support from fontconfig.
If you guys are interested you can take it into consideration in next version, and help test/report bugs:
I also want to inform you that after setting my locale to Arabic the font still did not change in Firefox/Chrome/Epiphany. but it changed in Gedit/Mousepad/Thunar/Nautilus …etc in Xubuntu 20.04
Thanks for your input, @sihosi1812. Sahel seems not to be packaged for Debian yet, right?
At the moment we are following the development of Noto Sans Arabic UI. There have been some upstream fixes to that font which are not yet reflected in Debian/Ubuntu.
Switching to an Arabic locale changes the default font for rendering Arabic script. So one explanation might be that you have specified font settings in your browsers which override the default. But if you seek help to figure it out, Ask Ubuntu is probably a better place.
today I got update that remove language-selector-ar
Ubuntu 20.04
Good. 
Hopefully it installed 56-language-selector-ar.conf too.
no, it didn’t
I can’t found 56-language-selector-ar.conf on /etc/fonts/conf.d/
I rewrite 69-language-selector-ar.conf and it solve the issue for me
What?? What does this command show for you:
dpkg -L language-selector-common | grep 56
For me it outputs
/etc/fonts/conf.avail/56-language-selector-ar.conf
/etc/fonts/conf.d/56-language-selector-ar.conf
i.e. the new .conf file and a symlink to it.
I found it on avail only
dpkg -L language-selector-common | grep 56
/etc/fonts/conf.avail/56-language-selector-ar.conf
Weird. Then can you please run this command:
sudo apt install --reinstall language-selector-common
and let us know if that adds the symlink. If it does, then please remove 69-language-selector-ar.conf and tell us if it still works.
No changes, I removed “69-language-selector-en.conf” and re-applied the steps and it didn’t fix the problem
This is indeed a mystery. Can you show the complete terminal output from the command:
sudo apt install --reinstall language-selector-commonI got
Reinstallation of language-selector-common is not possible, it cannot be downloaded.
full outputs
[xlmnxp@lucid ~]$ sudo apt install --reinstall language-selector-common
[sudo] password for xlmnxp:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reinstallation of language-selector-common is not possible, it cannot be downloaded.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
I suspect a problem with the archive mirror you are using. Would suggest that you open Software & Updates and change the Download from: setting to “Main server”. Then:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --reinstall language-selector-commonthe mirror is up to date
I will try main server
same thing in main server
full output
[xlmnxp@lucid ~]$ sudo apt update
Hit:1 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
Hit:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
Hit:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease
Hit:4 https://packages.microsoft.com/ubuntu/20.04/prod focal InRelease
Hit:5 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/ms-teams stable InRelease
Hit:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease
Hit:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease
Hit:8 https://download.mono-project.com/repo/ubuntu vs-bionic InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
1 package can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see it.
[xlmnxp@lucid ~]$ sudo apt install --reinstall language-selector-common
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reinstallation of language-selector-common is not possible, it cannot be downloaded.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
What does this output:
dpkg -l language-selector-commonBtw, another thing you may want to try:
sudo apt install language-selector-common=0.204.2 language-selector-gnome=0.204.2
1 Like
outputs
[xlmnxp@lucid ~]$ dpkg -l language-selector-common
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-========================-============-============-=================================
ii language-selector-common 0.304 all Language selector for Ubuntu