[Mlterm-dev-en] Getting a fallback font in mlterm

[Chris]

Hello!

I've been using mlterm for a while, and I've only been having one
problem. When my font doesn't have a character being displayed, it
shows as a box instead of falling back to a font that does have it.

I tried looking into fontconfig for this, but it appears as though
fontconfig does the right thing, and mlterm doesn't use fontconfig. Is
there a way to specify that I want to use my selected font for all
Unicode characters it has, and fall back to another font for the
characters it doesn't have?

Thanks in advance,
Chris

[Araki Ken]

Hi,

From: Chris <***@rdw.se>
Subject: [Mlterm-dev-en] Getting a fallback font in mlterm
Date: Sat, 23 May 2015 09:23:26 +0200
Message-ID: <***@vigilance>

k> I've been using mlterm for a while, and I've only been having one
k> problem. When my font doesn't have a character being displayed, it
k> shows as a box instead of falling back to a font that does have it.
k>
k> I tried looking into fontconfig for this, but it appears as though
k> fontconfig does the right thing, and mlterm doesn't use fontconfig. Is
k> there a way to specify that I want to use my selected font for all
k> Unicode characters it has, and fall back to another font for the
k> characters it doesn't have?

Pango library which many modern applications uses via toolkit libraries
such as gtk+ enables you to get a fallback font.
For now, mlterm doesn't use pango to draw text on a screen, so you can't
fall back to another font by configuring fontconfig.
If you want to use multiple fonts for unicode characters, configure
~/.mlterm/aafont manually as follows.

ISO10646_UCS4_1=Generic font
U+0590-05FF=Hebrew font
U+0E00-0E7F=Thai font
...

Regards,
---
Araki Ken
***@users.sourceforge.net

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[Chris S]

Quoting Araki Ken (2015-06-07 08:51:35)

Post by Araki Ken
For now, mlterm doesn't use pango to draw text on a screen, so you can't
fall back to another font by configuring fontconfig.
If you want to use multiple fonts for unicode characters, configure
~/.mlterm/aafont manually as follows.
ISO10646_UCS4_1=Generic font
U+0590-05FF=Hebrew font
U+0E00-0E7F=Thai font
...

Thank you for the hint, Ken! Does this mean that I have to figure out
the Unicode ranges for all characters not supported by my font, and
assign a font specifically to those?

Would it be possible to easily use my font for most Western European
languages, and some single fallback font for everything outside that
range? How do I go about figuring out what the interesting ranges in
this case is?

Regards,
Chris

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[Araki Ken]

From: Chris S <***@rdw.se>
Subject: Re: [Mlterm-dev-en] Getting a fallback font in mlterm
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2015 15:24:31 +0200

Post by Chris S
Thank you for the hint, Ken! Does this mean that I have to figure out
the Unicode ranges for all characters not supported by my font, and
assign a font specifically to those?
Would it be possible to easily use my font for most Western European
languages, and some single fallback font for everything outside that
range? How do I go about figuring out what the interesting ranges in
this case is?

Now hg head at http://bitbucket.org/arakiken/mlterm supports automatic
fallback. This feature is enabled only if type_engine = cairo.

Regards,
---
Araki Ken
***@users.sourceforge.net

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