Request better Arabic font for Ubuntu 20.04

Ok, good. Only you can tell how you succeeded in installing 0.304. :wink:

How it installed xD
maybe when I add PPA for UKUI DE or maybe something else

on UKUI 3.0 : “Ubuntu Kylin Members” team
they have language-selector version 0.304 :sweat_smile:

I don’t see the fun in it. They do that stupid thing only because of a tiny detail which should better be handled in the official version, and with that caused the confusion we just encountered. :frowning:

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@xlmnxp: I filed bug #1899376.

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Hi @xlmnxp, @gunnarhj and anyone else involved with this bug, I’m very sorry for the trouble, we have deleted the package from the PPA and will issuing a statement about this issue and getting everyone who added the PPA to manually downgrade the software version.

Once again, I am sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Thanks a lot for dealing with it so quickly, @handsome_feng.

Is there a reason to modify l-s somehow, as I discussed in the bug report?

We made that change was because the sogou input method conflicted with fcitx-ui-qimpanel and they needed to hijack the same dbus. We came up with this bad idea when we couldn’t change the Sogou input code (which is not open source but very useful for Chinese), not realizing the potential problems that could follow.

Now we’re communicating with Sogou to find another way to fix the problem, sorry again and thanks!

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I see. Closing the bug then.

Btw, talking about Sogou: Have they dropped the qt4 dependencies yet?

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1251749/how-to-install-sogou-input-method-on-ubuntu-20-04

Hi, The new version of sogou ( v2.3.2.07) already fixed the dependency issue, see: https://pinyin.sogou.com/linux/changelog.php

I will post this to the askubuntu.

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Ok. Not yet changed on this version of the Linux page, though:

Hello,

Is this still open for discussion and/or suggestions?

I use fontconfig settings as Chrome OS does for other non-latin and I’d love to contribute!

Hi @bario, and welcome to the Community Hub!

Well, the topic is not closed, but OTOH the thread is rather long, and the initial proposal has been implemented. New suggestions are of course welcome, but probably it would be better to start a new topic.

Here is the default fontconfig of Chrome OS: local.conf

For Arabic they prefer the following:

(serif and monospace): Noto Naskh Arabic
(sans-serif): Noto Sans Arabic
(system-ui): Noto Sans Arabic UI

And to explicitly set lang for each style from above:

	<match target="pattern">
		<test name="lang" compare="contains">
			<string>ar</string>
		</test>
		<test name="family">
			<string>serif</string>
		</test>
		<edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
			<string>Noto Naskh Arabic</string>
			<string>Noto Serif</string>
		</edit>
	</match>
	<match target="pattern">
		<test name="lang" compare="contains">
			<string>ar</string>
		</test>
		<test name="family">
			<string>sans-serif</string>
		</test>
		<edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
			<string>Noto Sans Arabic</string>
			<string>Noto Sans</string>
		</edit>
	</match>
	<match target="pattern">
		<test name="lang" compare="contains">
			<string>ar</string>
		</test>
		<test name="family">
			<string>monospace</string>
		</test>
		<edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
			<string>Noto Naskh Arabic</string>
			<string>Noto Sans Mono</string>
		</edit>
	</match>
	<match target="pattern">
		<test name="lang" compare="contains">
			<string>ar</string>
		</test>
		<test name="family">
			<string>system-ui</string>
		</test>
		<edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
			<string>Noto Sans Arabic UI</string>
			<string>Noto Sans</string>
		</edit>
	</match>

LC_CTYPE=ar_IQ.UTF-8 fc-match -a "serif" | head -8 gives the desired results (Also matches Google guidelines for putting Noto Arabic followed by Latin, not the other way around):

NotoNaskhArabic-Regular.ttf: "Noto Naskh Arabic" "Regular"
NotoNaskhArabic-Medium.ttf: "Noto Naskh Arabic" "Medium"
NotoNaskhArabic-Bold.ttf: "Noto Naskh Arabic" "Bold"
NotoSerif-Regular.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Regular"
NotoSerif-Medium.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Medium"
NotoSerif-Light.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Light"
NotoSerif-Thin.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Thin"
NotoSerif-Bold.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Bold"

Google Noto Guidelines

Ok, thanks.

The fontconfig of Chrome OS is what Kubuntu uses as its default font configuration. Personally I think that standard Ubuntu should consider to do something similar (if I recall correctly I mentioned that somewhere in this thread). I haven’t found the time to really suggest it, though. Such a change would probably result in a lot of discussion. Just look at this thread, which is about the default Arabic font only.

As regards Arabic, standard Ubuntu currently uses this config file .

Let’s see:

sans-serif
We considered Noto Sans Arabic both with and without UI, and landed in using the UI variant.

serif
Seems we are agreed there.

monospace
Naskh is not a monospace font. We don’t specify any Arabic monospace font which means that DejaVu Sans Mono is applied.

system-ui or ui-sans
Those are new things for UI components. My impression is that applications generally don’t make use of those yet, and as long as we use Noto Sans Arabic UI for sans-serif anyway, I suppose there is no reason to dig so deep into it.

So to summarize it’s not crystal clear to me what it is you suggest. Did you read this long thread before posting, and saw the arguments, especially about the sans-serif font?

Yes, I did go through the entire thread!

My main suggestion and goal here was to add those Arabic fonts in the prefer list (not only serif, sans-serif) of 56-kubuntu-noto.conf or Chrome OS’s local.conf to your 56-language-selector-ar.conf. In other words, for sync purposes with prefer list.

But I understand that you opted to use the UI variant as the regular (sans) font and you had issues with Naskh in Gnome Terminal.

Hint: There is a nice fixed-width Arabic font named almfixed with full-unicode Arabic support for users who finds DejaVu ugly. It’s part of the TeX-Gyre project: almfixed

And, may I please know why we listed Noto Sans before Noto Sans Arabic UI in the fontconfig and not the other way around as Google suggests?

Right. As regards the UI variant choice, and since I don’t speak Arabic, I have absolutely no own opinion, but refer solely to the above discussion. As regards monospace, and since Ubuntu has DejaVu Sans Mono, it wouldn’t be so wise IMO to specify a non-monospace font just because they do so in Chrome OS.

(The issue in gnome-terminal meaning that you need to specify the Arabic monospace font manually remains, if I recall it correctly, but for the desktop itself there are other mechanisms but fontconfig to determine fonts, and the issue is probably caused by those.)

Thanks. That font seems to be provided by the texlive-fonts-extra package in Debian/Ubuntu. Installing it would add 2 GB disk space, so it’s not an option for the default configuration.

Mostly because I had the possible next step in mind, i.e. making Noto fonts default for most standard Ubuntu users as it currently is in Kubuntu. In that scenario we would skip the lang test, which would make it necessary to state Noto Sans first (as Chrome OS does, btw).

My interpretation of that Google document is that it applies to CSS properties in documents and applications, which is something else but a system wide default fontconfig configuration if I understand it correctly. And it’s merely an example, isn’t it? They say: " It is recommended to retain "Noto Sans" in the list." And we do so.

But more importantly: Are you aware of a case where switching the order would matter in practice?

23 posts were split to a new topic: Arabic Font Problem

another thing that we need to focus is 3rd party extensions … how does it work and how the framework handles the string manipulations like x in English to x in Arabic ?