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Both the VGA fonts for terminal and Helvetica fonts don't support slavic characters #314

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SolsticeSpectrum opened this issue Dec 4, 2023 · 13 comments

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@SolsticeSpectrum
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I am on latest Xubuntu which I unfortunately installed in Czech language because I didn't know this would be an issue later, problem with Xubuntu is that once you install it in specific language, you can't just switch back to English as all the folders and stuff already use czech translations. So maybe it would be nice if those fonts did support slavic characters.

I am talking about: "ěščřžýáíé"

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As you can see, in both titles and terminal, these characters look weird

@SolsticeSpectrum
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As a workaround is disabling anti-aliasing in the appearance/fonts menu, it doesn't fix the issue, the characters still look bit off but it is less noticeable since they are not smooth anymore. This does not work for terminal tho so you are just better off ignoring it.

@1chan-level-journalist
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1chan-level-journalist commented Dec 22, 2023

On topic of Helvetica font not including anything other than Latin and Cyrillic characters - it's been bothering me for awhile, too.
I've been working on creating a massive compilation of various versions of MS Sans Serif in a single .otb file. It is very close to completion now. It's not quite ready for release yet, as I'm yet to finish Arabic and Thai languages, but I believe it should satisfy your use case already.
I just did a VirtualBox test install, here's what it looks like with the font installed:
screenshot
Looks good to me. Try it out!
MSSansSerifRaster.zip

As for the VGA terminal font - try this one out: VGA.zip
The name is "VGA Medium".

@SolsticeSpectrum
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SolsticeSpectrum commented Dec 24, 2023

@1chan-level-journalist You are EPIC! Yes both the Raster and VGA fonts work like a charm! I tried MSSansSerif myself by copying it from my Windows installation but it didn't fix the issue and there were other issues, your version however works flawlessly! The VGA font works like a charm as well!

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Some titles are no longer bold however but I assume that's how it's meant to be in the first place?
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If it's not supposed to be that way, then I don't know why titles that were bold before are not bold anymore
Maybe it somehow fails to detect the bold variant?

I just had to set the title font in window manager settings to bold variant lol

Note: I moved the fonts to the opentype folder, delete the ones I had before from the truetype folder, ran fc-cache and applied the fonts in Appereance, Window Manager settings and Qt5 configurator

@SolsticeSpectrum
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SolsticeSpectrum commented Dec 24, 2023

Issues:
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the í character should have some space behind it in the bold variant
the same applies for ï

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the / character should also have some more space behind it in the bold variant

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the ř character has a line instead of hook in the regular variant

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The hook above ě is too high compared to other characters in the regular variant

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other than the spacing of í, the above issues don't apply to the bold variant, both ř and ě are displayed correctly in the bold version

@1chan-level-journalist feel free to send me updated versions so I can test the above issues

@1chan-level-journalist
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On topic of some symbols not looking right - I've had an issue with FontForge, where the .sfd for regular variant got corrupted at some point, where some characters turned into duplicates of other characters. Seems like bold variant was unaffected however.

As for the character kerning issue - that's another issue that's been plaguing me for awhile, and I have no idea what is causing this. I was copying everything exactly how it was in the original .FON files, and yet some characters just don't kern the same way as they do in the original. Maybe the issue lies with the .otb format itself? Regardless, the only way to fix this is to manually alter the kerning so that it looks right... when it allows me to do that, that is! There are times when the character kerning doesn't change no matter what I do to it - bold slash is one of them.
MSSansSerifRaster.zip

By the way if you use .otb fonts with Qt-based programs, some windows would look super-stretched. Like this:
screen
Apparently it has something to do with how Qt handles .otb fonts. One way to avoid this is to convert the .otb font into .bdf format, then convert that into a .pcf format, and use that font instead - unlike GTK-based apps, Qt-based apps still can use .pcf fonts, and there is no such problem.
MSSansSerifRasterPCF.zip

@SolsticeSpectrum
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SolsticeSpectrum commented Dec 25, 2023

@1chan-level-journalist thank you very much, the new version fixed all the issues expect / but I can live with that for now
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the í works fine now but I think you forgot ï and i with two dots above it, it doesn't have that spacing applied like í does

Oh I just noticed, you fixed non bold ř but forgot about capital Ř it still has line instead of hook in the non bold variant, the bold one is okay
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Other capital symbols seems fine, even bold capital Í doesn't have same spacing issue as the small caps had before the fix

@1chan-level-journalist
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How about this one?
MSSansSerifRaster.zip
MSSansSerifRasterPCF.zip

@Dejweed
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Dejweed commented Dec 25, 2023

Awesome work! Could you make a git repository or something similar, so you don't have to share files every time?

@1chan-level-journalist
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Yeah, I'll make one once I finish all the languages, which shouldn't take too long.

@1chan-level-journalist
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I just discovered a workaround to "font kerns not applying to certain symbols" issue!
While FontForge still refuses to cooperate with me on this, I can just edit the .sfd in a text editor manually, and then generate font from that.
MSSansSerifRaster.zip
MSSansSerifRasterPCF.zip
The slash should look fine now. Try it out!

@1chan-level-journalist
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The font is ready.
https://github.com/1chan-level-journalist/MS-Sans-Serif-Raster

@SolsticeSpectrum
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@1chan-level-journalist Sorry I got busy with life but I am back on Chicago and I downloaded the latest update of the font and everything seems to be fine, good job!

@Dejweed
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Dejweed commented Apr 10, 2024

The font is ready. https://github.com/1chan-level-journalist/MS-Sans-Serif-Raster

Nice! Could you also add the VGA font?

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