Comments on: Display hindi unicode fonts on Google Chrome on Ubuntu Linux https://www.binarytides.com/display-hindi-unicode-fonts-on-google-chrome-on-ubuntu-linux/ News, Technology, Entertainment and more Fri, 18 Oct 2013 05:35:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 By: kalicharan https://www.binarytides.com/display-hindi-unicode-fonts-on-google-chrome-on-ubuntu-linux/comment-page-1/#comment-65762 Fri, 18 Oct 2013 05:35:00 +0000 http://www.binarytides.com/blog/?p=371#comment-65762 I am on ubuntu 12.04 and there is no .fonts.conf file in $HOME directory

]]> By: K. Sethu https://www.binarytides.com/display-hindi-unicode-fonts-on-google-chrome-on-ubuntu-linux/comment-page-1/#comment-65427 Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:32:17 +0000 http://www.binarytides.com/blog/?p=371#comment-65427 With the use of {edit name=”family” mode=”append” binding=”strong”} type configuration or its variant with binding=”same” as in some of the 90-ttf-xxx-fonts.conf files in /etc/conf.avail, I find there are unacceptable side effects to matchings for other languages.

Suppose the .fonts.conf has only the fontconfig statements you show above, i.e., binding the meta fonts to “gargi” for Hindi. Now use each of the following commands from a terminal to check the status of matchings first for Hindi and then for any other non-Devangiri using Indic language – say for Tamil:
For Hindi:
fc-match Sans:lang=hi
fc-match Serif:lang=hi
fc-match Mono:lang=hi

For Tamil
fc-match Sans:lang=ta
fc-match Serif:lang=ta
fc-match Mono:lang=ta

Now provided “gargi” font is installed,
For Hindi you should be getting “gargi” for all 3 meta fonts.
And for Tamil I see the results yield correctly only in case for Serif but for Sans and Mono wrong match as “gargi”

In the .fonts.conf you can also include for more than language by copying from 90-ttf… files for different languages and editing for the type of bind etc. But I have found the exercise to open more cans of worms. Always the problems are that the matching for some Indic language for one or more of “Sans”, “Serif” and “Mono” would dominate over corresponding matchings of other Indic (plus Sinhala too) scripts.

In fact even without user’s own .fonts.conf the system defaults get dominated from the sym links /etc/fonts/conf.d/90-ttf-xxxxx.conf (xxxx are different languages) again one Inidc language dominating all for “Serif”.

In case of Tamil the comment statements in 90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf clearly indicate the purposes of the configuration to include that the TSC* and TAM* type Tamil fonts are to be never picked by the Fontconfig. However in reality it fails to do that. If TSCu_Paranar is installed then with the default config tree including the 90-ttf-tamil-fonts.conf it is still matched to “Sans” !

Regarding the concerned bug for Tamil contents Google Chrome / Chromium-browser on Ubuntu or Debian running on English (or some other non-Tamil locale) I wish to point out the fundamental problem to solve is that the Chrome / Chromium-browser is not like other applications like Firefox, gedit, in taking and using Fontconfig’s matching. In the absence of TSCu_Paranar why should Chrome / Chromium-browser choose FreeSerif which is not advocated in Fontconfig. Shouldn’t it also choose Lohit Tamil like the other applications do?

K. Sethu

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