Fontconfig does not find fonts in non-default profiles

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6 participants

Alex Kost
Bengt Richter
Ludovic Courtès
Pierre Neidhardt
Maxim Cournoyer
zimoun

Owner: unassigned

Submitted by: Pierre Neidhardt

Severity: normal

Pierre Neidhardt wrote on 5 Dec 2019 11:43

Recipients:(address . bug-guix@gnu.org)

Message-ID:871rtjm4rt.fsf@ambrevar.xyz

The fontconfig package has this bit:

Toggle snippet (5 lines)

(string-append "--with-add-fonts="

"~/.guix-profile/share/fonts,"

"/run/current-system/profile/share/fonts")

If I understand correctly, fonts can only be installed at the system

level or in ~/.guix-profile.

Is there a way to install fonts in a non-default profile?

If not, it would be nice to implement it. Can we use an environment variable?

Pierre Neidhardt

https://ambrevar.xyz/

Pierre Neidhardt wrote on 5 Dec 2019 11:47

Re: bug#38498: Acknowledgement (Fontconfig does not find fonts in non-default profiles)

Recipients:(address . 38498@debbugs.gnu.org)

Message-ID:87y2vrkq0p.fsf@ambrevar.xyz

This issue overlaps with #31403.

Pierre Neidhardt

https://ambrevar.xyz/

Alex Kost wrote on 5 Dec 2019 18:06

Re: bug#38498: Fontconfig does not find fonts in non-default profiles

Recipients:(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)(address . 38498@debbugs.gnu.org)

Message-ID:87o8wm66sd.fsf@gmail.com

Pierre Neidhardt (2019-12-05 11:43 +0100) wrote:

Toggle quote (10 lines)> The fontconfig package has this bit:
>
> (string-append "--with-add-fonts="
>   "~/.guix-profile/share/fonts,"
>   "/run/current-system/profile/share/fonts")
>
> If I understand correctly, fonts can only be installed at the system
> level or in ~/.guix-profile.
> Is there a way to install fonts in a non-default profile?

I install fonts into a special profile. All you need to do is edit your

"~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf" file. Mine looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
    <dir>~/.guix-profiles/fonts/fonts/share/fonts</dir>
</fontconfig>

This allows ‘fc-cache’ and similar commands to find fonts from a

non-standard directory.

Alex

Pierre Neidhardt wrote on 5 Dec 2019 18:52

Recipients:(name . Alex Kost)(address . alezost@gmail.com)(address . 38498@debbugs.gnu.org)

Message-ID:87fthylkw4.fsf@ambrevar.xyz

Thank you Alex, that's what I did and it works.

That said, I think it'd be nice if Guix would automatically do this for

us. After all, it already handles multiple-profiles properly for so

many other things! :)

Pierre Neidhardt

https://ambrevar.xyz/

Alex Kost wrote on 6 Dec 2019 18:45

Recipients:(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)(address . 38498@debbugs.gnu.org)

Message-ID:87immtuz3s.fsf@gmail.com

Pierre Neidhardt (2019-12-05 18:52 +0100) wrote:

Toggle quote (6 lines)

> Thank you Alex, that's what I did and it works.

> That said, I think it'd be nice if Guix would automatically do this for

> us. After all, it already handles multiple-profiles properly for so

> many other things! :)

TBH I don't understand all the problems related to multiple-profiles
that were discussed and "solved" recently.  I have been using multiple
profiles for at least 5 years (I don't even have ~/.guix-profile on my
disk) and I have not had any serious problems, just some small obstacles
that can be easily overpassed.

Anyway, what I have written is not related to the bug, sorry for the
noise :-)

-- 
Alex

Pierre Neidhardt wrote on 6 Dec 2019 19:01

Recipients:(name . Alex Kost)(address . alezost@gmail.com)(address . 38498@debbugs.gnu.org)

Message-ID:87blslgwp2.fsf@ambrevar.xyz

Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> writes:

Toggle quote (6 lines)

> TBH I don't understand all the problems related to multiple-profiles

> that were discussed and "solved" recently. I have been using multiple

> profiles for at least 5 years (I don't even have ~/.guix-profile on my

> disk) and I have not had any serious problems, just some small obstacles

> that can be easily overpassed.

The point of multi-profile support is to:

- behave in the most expected way;

- factor the work upstream.

The less time individual users spend on their ad-hoc multi-profile

support, the more time they can spend on other (more productive) things�:)

We lose generality in making ~/.guix-profile special.

Pierre Neidhardt

https://ambrevar.xyz/

Ludovic Courtès wrote on 10 Dec 2019 17:53

Recipients:(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)

Message-ID:87o8wgm8au.fsf@gnu.org

Hello!

Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> skribis:

Toggle quote (2 lines)

> We lose generality in making ~/.guix-profile special.

I think we all agree on that. Fontconfig is one of the very few cases

where we ended up resorting to that. The reason I think is simply that

Fontconfig honors ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.xml but does not honor a

search path environment variable as is customary.

We could fix that by adding a patch so that Fontconfig would honor

$FONTCONFIG_FONT_PATH or similar.

WDYT?

Thanks,

Ludo’.

Pierre Neidhardt wrote on 10 Dec 2019 18:11

Recipients:(name . Ludovic Courtès)(address . ludo@gnu.org)

Message-ID:875ziods13.fsf@ambrevar.xyz

Hi!

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

Toggle quote (3 lines)

> We could fix that by adding a patch so that Fontconfig would honor

> $FONTCONFIG_FONT_PATH or similar.

Have we ever asked upstream?  Maybe they would consider adding it.
If they don't, I'm in favour of a patch! :)

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

Ludovic Courtès wrote on 12 Dec 2019 14:04

Recipients:(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)

Message-ID:87zhfx8zl4.fsf@gnu.org

Hi!

Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> skribis:

Toggle quote (8 lines)

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

>> We could fix that by adding a patch so that Fontconfig would honor

>> $FONTCONFIG_FONT_PATH or similar.

> Have we ever asked upstream? Maybe they would consider adding it.

> If they don't, I'm in favour of a patch! :)

I don’t think anyone asked upstream and I agree that we should! It

could help to have a patch ready to get the discussion started anyway.

Thanks,

Ludo’.

Pierre Neidhardt wrote on 13 Dec 2019 14:11

Recipients:(name . Ludovic Courtès)(address . ludo@gnu.org)

Message-ID:87fthobcb2.fsf@ambrevar.xyz

Just read this:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/issues/126

Could we do the following: use a profile hook to generate a config file

and set the environment variable FONTCONFIG_FILE to this file?

(I feel that we can't do that because the path of the hook-generated

cannot be known in advance.)

I looked at what NixOS does in

nixpkgs/pkgs/development/libraries/fontconfig/default.nix:

Toggle quote (3 lines)

> - NixOS creates /etc/fonts/${configVersion}/fonts.conf link to $out/etc/fonts/fonts.conf,

> and other modifications should go to /etc/fonts/${configVersion}/conf.d

We don't have a global font folder and we probably don't want to have

one, so I guess this is not ideal.

The <dir> fontconfig setting in Nix is

Toggle snippet (8 lines)

<dir>~/.nix-profile/lib/X11/fonts</dir>

<dir>~/.nix-profile/share/fonts</dir>

<dir>/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/lib/X11/fonts</dir>

<dir>/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/share/fonts</dir>

so it probably suffers from the same issue.

Pierre Neidhardt

https://ambrevar.xyz/

Ludovic Courtès wrote on 14 Dec 2019 15:08

Recipients:(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)

Message-ID:87r217yp8c.fsf@gnu.org

Hello,

Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> skribis:

Toggle quote (6 lines)

> Just read this:

> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/issues/126

> Could we do the following: use a profile hook to generate a config file

> and set the environment variable FONTCONFIG_FILE to this file?

I guess that would work.

Toggle quote (3 lines)

> (I feel that we can't do that because the path of the hook-generated

> cannot be known in advance.)

‘FONTCONFIG_FILE’ could be a search path of ‘fontconfig’ (the usual

way), but then we’d hit https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/22138,

meaning that it would not be set automatically.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.

Bengt Richter wrote on 15 Dec 2019 23:14

Recipients:(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)

Message-ID:20191215221406.GA1010@PhantoNv4ArchGx.localdomain

Attachment: file

zimoun wrote on 16 Dec 2019 16:25

Recipients:(name . Bengt Richter)(address . bokr@bokr.com)

Message-ID:CAJ3okZ3KYRW3mZPMsumD_ZhL9GvXFfuLVahJ6Ft6oc=VR1ZimA@mail.gmail.com

Hi Bengt,

On Sun, 15 Dec 2019 at 23:15, Bengt Richter <bokr@bokr.com> wrote:

Toggle quote (2 lines)

> How about an interplanetary font folder? cf. IPLD[1] :-)

I am not sure it is related to the issue discussed here, IMHO.

However, if you are interested in IPFS stuff, give a look at this

patch [#] because it still needs some love to be merged...

[#] https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=33899

All the best,

simon

Maxim Cournoyer wrote on 19 Aug 2022 16:26

Recipients:(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)(address . 38498-done@debbugs.gnu.org)

Message-ID:875yioz4ve.fsf@gmail.com

Hi Pierre,

Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> writes:

Toggle quote (9 lines)

> The fontconfig package has this bit:

> (string-append "--with-add-fonts="

> "~/.guix-profile/share/fonts,"

> "/run/current-system/profile/share/fonts")

> If I understand correctly, fonts can only be installed at the system

> level or in ~/.guix-profile.

This is no longer true, since commit

c738a054cac00441a4f697f0b40705d0b3f4a7a7, which allowed fontconfig to

find fonts via a search path specification using XDG_DATA_DIRS.

Closing.

Maxim

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