Some unicode symbols still not displayed with urxvt or xterm #176

css459 · 2016-06-01T03:43:54Z

I've been having trouble viewing certain unicode symbols under urxvt or xterm. The font I'm using is Source Code Pro for Powerline which I installed through the powerline fonts repo. My .Xresources contains the following:

  9 URxvt.font: xft:Source\ Code\ Pro\ for\ Powerline:pixelsize=22,xft:PowerlineSymbols
 10 URxvt.scrollBar: false
 11 
 12 Xft.dpi: 150
 13 Xft.antialias: true
 14 Xft.rgba: rgb
 15 Xft.hinting: true
 16 Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
 17 
 18 XTerm*selectToClipboard: true
 19 XTerm*termName: xterm-256color
 20 XTerm*locale: true
 21 XTerm*metaSendsEscape: true
 22 UXTerm*faceName: Source Code Pro for Powerline:style=Medium
 23 UXTerm*faceSize:10

but I still get funky behavior like in the following circumstances

$TERM outputs rxvt-unicode-256color

Running urxvt --help 2>&1 | grep options: returns iso14755, unicode3, and frills among other things.

I've also made sure that my locale and LANG are indeed set to en_US-UTF-8
Output of locale -a
C
en_US.utf8
POSIX

So I'm unsure why I still can't see some of these unicode symbols because I have all my bases covered? This is happening system-wide as I can't see certain symbols in Firefox either, so I think it has to be a font issue.

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

n2i · 2016-06-27T13:06:50Z

Hi,

Have you tried it in GVIM or another term such as lxterminal?

I've got the same problem with both urxvt and xterm, and with termNames: xterm, xterm-256color and so on.

Then I tried the same font on GVIM and lxterminal, both just worked fine, so I think the problem is not a font's issue. It's must be a term features/settings issue.

I cannot figure out why till now. Waiting for help.

css459 · 2016-06-27T18:25:46Z

All works well on MacVIM but GVIM under linux gives a similar behavior, so I suppose this is system oriented.

n2i · 2016-07-03T16:30:39Z

With GVIM, you specific the font by set guifont=, have you try this yet?

The following thread gives informations that help to get urxvt works with powerline fonts.
powerline/powerline#684

I got urxvt displays powerline symbols well now, but no luck with Awesome fonts, nerd-fonts.

andrew-nowak · 2016-08-16T21:59:07Z

So I had this issue in urxvt and it took me a stupidly long time to find that (for me) this was caused by the characters being too closely spaced.
In my .Xresources, I had
URxvt.letterSpace: 0 which caused some symbols not to be displayed
I changed this to URxvt.letterSpace: 1 and the symbols were displayed.

I'm not sure that this solves the above problem, as gvim did always show the missing symbols, but hopefully helps anyone who has read through the issues and is still stuck with symbols not displaying.

gipert · 2016-10-19T10:16:12Z

Even after trying to change the letterSpace instruction I still get the same problem... Any other hint?

tomibennett · 2016-12-14T12:02:07Z

Same problem over here. I tried in Terminator however and it was fine except for some spacing issue.

mrmowgli · 2017-04-13T05:01:56Z

Ok, so, after digging around for a while I found out that the real issue (on some urxvt installs) is that on really lean builds not all options are actually compiled into urxvt. In other words see this:

http://powerline.readthedocs.io/en/master/troubleshooting.html#urxvt-unicode3-and-frills

akatrevorjay · 2017-07-03T20:09:58Z

For URxvt to show glyphs, you must use the single width variants (they end in Mono

akatrevorjay · 2017-07-03T20:10:38Z

Without those, only the single-width fitting glyphs will show

akatrevorjay · 2017-07-03T20:11:17Z

(unless you up URxvt.letterSpace that is, but then everything looks all hokey)

akatrevorjay · 2017-07-03T20:32:15Z

More info: https://github.com/powerman/wcwidth-icons

tnguyen14 · 2017-09-06T19:33:19Z

I've tried adding letterSpace, but certain character, such as "" still doesn't display for me..

thulester · 2017-12-13T17:22:51Z

Your .Xresources file has prefixes of the form:
XTerm* and
UXTerm*

But echo $TERM suggests you're using another terminal:
$TERM outputs rxvt-unicode-256color

I'm running rxvt-unicode-256color and my prefixes are of the form:
URxvt*

Just guessing here but I'm thinking XTerm works for xterm and URxvt works for rxvt-unicode-256color?

See: powerline/fonts#176 (comment)

step- · 2018-02-11T12:56:06Z

urxvt -letsp 0 worked for me, so I added URxvt.letterSpace: 0 to my ~/.Xresources file.
It's zero explicitly. Don't rely on the internal default initialization of letterSpace, which in my system is evidently broken. If zero isn't enough, try letterSpace 1, which makes the terminal even wider.

tynrare · 2018-03-04T03:25:09Z

Oh god finnaly i fixed it.

All was because two things:

Fallback problem (not really big)
minspace problem (too good hidden)

My config .Xresources:
URxvt.font: xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=14,xft:Symbola,xft:Noto Emoji:minspace=False
Or you can test it by command
urxvt -fn 'xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=14,xft:Symbola,xft:Noto Emoji:minspace=False'

I had to use pack of fonts for unicode and emodji as fallback fonts. It fixed some of missing symbols, but not all
Here's hard trick. urxvt can't draw one symbol on another. What you have to do to make all symbols work:
2.1. Don't use Mono fonts. OR use letterSpace: 3+
2.2. Add minspace=False if you still want use Mono (And just for case anyway). It will help a little but you will still need biger letterSpace

So problem i see - we have to expand letter-space somehow or scale down symbols that too big. Or fing good non-mono font. Actually without monospace font big symbols scaling down, but @ W M scales down too and it looks ugly. Anyone know how to allow some symbols be greater than another?

p.s. I see urxvt-font-size packet in aur, maybe it might help
p.p.s. Sooo i just moved to sakura terminal. It's pure urxvt problem that i can't fix

blockloop · 2018-03-24T03:12:26Z

I actually fixed the font problem by following doronbehar's fix posted here

ln -s ~/.local/share/fonts ~/.fonts

None of the other fixes worked for me. letterSpace looks terrible with anything but -1 for me.

stevanmilic · 2018-04-17T20:26:16Z

I fixed it following solution from @Tymonrare.

My .Xresource file before:

URxvt*font:                 xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27
URxvt*boldFont:             xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27
URxvt*letterSpace: 0

My .Xresource file after fix:

URxvt*font:                 xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18
URxvt*boldFont:             xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18
URxvt*letterSpace: 0

As you can see I only added xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18 as my second font, and it was working good after that, although some fonts are still not showing up.

Hope that helps someone!

flamendless · 2018-06-23T03:11:13Z

Woah, thanks @stevanmilic
Im using rxvt-unicode-patched on arch linux.
Ive set mine into
URxvt*font: xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:size=15, xft:DejaVu Sans:size=12
playing around with the values makes the icon fonts to be displayed

dlmiyamoto · 2018-07-19T23:26:49Z

Recently dealt with this problem as a Fedora user and thought I'd chime in. I noted this bug report
. Powerline glyphs did not work on urxvt and urxvt256c, worked with urxvt256c-ml.

See also: powerline/fonts#176 (comment)

johnchandlerburnham · 2018-09-23T02:43:00Z

Based on @stevanmilic's solution, I added the following to my .Xresources:

#define font1         Inconsolata LGC
#define font2         Inconsolata Nerd Font
#define font3         DejaVu Sans Mono Nerd Font
#define font4         Noto Sans Mono CJK JP

URxvt*letterSpace: 0
URxvt*font:           xft:font1:pixelsize=16, xft:font2:pixelsize=14:minspace=false, xft:font3:pixelsize=14,xft:font4:pixelsize=14
URxvt*boldFont:       xft:font1:bold:pixelsize=16, xft:font2:pixelsize=14:minspace=False,xft:font3:pixelsize=14,xft:font4:pixelsize=14
URxvt*italicFont:     xft:font1:italic:pixelsize=16, xft:font2:pixelsize=14:minspace=False,xft:font3:pixelsize=14,xft:font4:pixelsize=14
URxvt*boldItalicFont: xft:font1:bold:italic:pixelsize=16, xft:font2:pixelsize=14:minspace=False, xft:font3:pixelsize=14, xft:font4:pixelsize=14

This has very good Unicode symbol coverage, which you can see in this screenshot:

patillacode · 2018-11-16T02:42:44Z

URxvtfont: xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18 URxvtboldFont: xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18 URxvt*letterSpace: 0

This was the final solution. Thanks

denandaprayoga · 2019-02-04T14:53:23Z

URxvt*font: xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18

thanks, it work for me

sdh0618 · 2019-02-21T17:43:00Z

Based on @stevanmilic's solution, I added the following to my .Xresources:

#define font1         Inconsolata LGC
#define font2         Inconsolata Nerd Font
#define font3         DejaVu Sans Mono Nerd Font
#define font4         Noto Sans Mono CJK JP

URxvt*letterSpace: 0
URxvt*font:           xft:font1:pixelsize=16, xft:font2:pixelsize=14:minspace=false, xft:font3:pixelsize=14,xft:font4:pixelsize=14
URxvt*boldFont:       xft:font1:bold:pixelsize=16, xft:font2:pixelsize=14:minspace=False,xft:font3:pixelsize=14,xft:font4:pixelsize=14
URxvt*italicFont:     xft:font1:italic:pixelsize=16, xft:font2:pixelsize=14:minspace=False,xft:font3:pixelsize=14,xft:font4:pixelsize=14
URxvt*boldItalicFont: xft:font1:bold:italic:pixelsize=16, xft:font2:pixelsize=14:minspace=False, xft:font3:pixelsize=14, xft:font4:pixelsize=14

This has very good Unicode symbol coverage, which you can see in this screenshot:

What's the browser you are using?

craftyguy · 2019-03-15T03:29:53Z

@sdh0618 that looks like qutebrowser

tsoernes · 2019-03-21T14:25:55Z

I'm still struggling with a couple of symbols.
I got:

URxvt.font: xft:Liberation Mono for Powerline:antialias=true:hinting=true:pixelsize=22:minspace=false, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=22
URxvt.boldFont:  xft:Liberation Mono for Powerline:antialias=true:hinting=true:pixelsize=22:weight=bold, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=22:weight=bold

URxvt.xftAntialias:     true
URxvt.xftHinting:	true
URxvt.letterSpace: -1

Xft.dpi:                    96
Xft.antialias:              true
Xft.rgba:                   rgb
Xft.hinting:                true
Xft.hintstyle:              hintsmedium

And,

$ urxvt256c-ml --help 2>&1 | grep options:
options: perl,xft,styles,combining,blink,iso14755,unicode3,encodings=eu+vn+jp+jp-ext+kr+zh+zh-ext,fade,transparent,tint,pixbuf,XIM,frills,selectionscrolling,wheel,slipwheel,smart-resize,cursorBlink,pointerBlank,scrollbars=plain+rxvt+NeXT+xterm

But this symbol does not display:

(Have tried with letterSpace 0 and 1)

For some reason, starting urxvt from terminal yields the message
urxvt: unable to calculate font width for 'Courier New:slant=0:weight=100:pixelsize=26:antialias=False:autohint=True:minspace=True', ignoring.
Even though there's no reference to Courier anywhere in the config file and my system does not have Courier New installed at all.

LinusLaber · 2019-04-04T18:09:51Z

In my case the font works fine in xterm

but doesn't with urxvt

URxvt.font: xft: Source Code Pro for Powerline:style=Regular:size=11

XTerm.vt100.faceName: Source Code Pro for Powerline:style=Regular:size=11

And letterspacing , minspace=False, checking compile flags and urxvt256c-ml all didn't help.

natanhp · 2021-03-03T13:10:41Z

I fixed it following solution from @Tymonrare.

My .Xresource file before:
URxvt*font:                 xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27
URxvt*boldFont:             xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27
URxvt*letterSpace: 0
My .Xresource file after fix:
URxvt*font:                 xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18
URxvt*boldFont:             xft:Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono:pixelsize=27:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18
URxvt*letterSpace: 0
As you can see I only added xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=18 as my second font, and it was working good after that, although some fonts are still not showing up.

Hope that helps someone!
This answer works, thankyou. However, I did some modification to make it look nicer in my terminal:

URxvt*font:                 xft:Fira Code Retina:pixelsize=11:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=8
URxvt*boldFont:             xft:Fira Code Retina:pixelsize=11:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=8

But still it won't display this box icon (📦), still searching for the perfect solution.

UPDATE

I can display 📦 as well as ⌚ and maybe any other emoji using Symbola font

URxvt*font:                 xft:Fira Code Retina:pixelsize=11:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=8, xft: Symbola
URxvt*boldFont:             xft:Fira Code Retina:pixelsize=11:minspace=False, xft:DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=8, xft: Symbola

- fonts with 'Mono' suffix are needed to fix glyphs display - see issue: powerline/fonts#176 (comment) - more info about 'Mono' variant: https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/blob/master/patched-fonts/Hack/readme.md

athityakumar mentioned this issue Jul 9, 2017

No icons appear in urxvt athityakumar/colorls#55

Open

gorillamoe added a commit to gorillamoe/dotfiles that referenced this issue Jan 8, 2018

Fixes powerline support for Source Code Pro

683625d

See: powerline/fonts#176 (comment)

Nano-Sec mentioned this issue Aug 6, 2018

agnoster displays incorrectly ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh#7029

Closed

Jeansen mentioned this issue Aug 19, 2018

Font rendering issue urxvt ryanoasis/nerd-fonts#150

Closed

tony added a commit to tony/.dot-config that referenced this issue Sep 12, 2018

Fix some of the powerline font issues

a8322e9

See also: powerline/fonts#176 (comment)

Riiskyy mentioned this issue May 12, 2019

unicode rendering issues with Nerd Fonts b-ryan/powerline-shell#460

Closed

dngray mentioned this issue Aug 9, 2019

Vim colorscheme, separate repo, togglebg, 24bit RGB jan-warchol/selenized#47

Closed

gschenk mentioned this issue Jan 31, 2020

Not all icons are displayed in terminal correctly spaceship-prompt/spaceship-prompt#202

Closed

miguelmota mentioned this issue Apr 5, 2021

Graph ASCII style cointop-sh/cointop#102

Closed

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

Some unicode symbols still not displayed with urxvt or xterm #176

Some unicode symbols still not displayed with urxvt or xterm #176

css459 commented Jun 1, 2016 •

edited

n2i commented Jun 27, 2016

css459 commented Jun 27, 2016

n2i commented Jul 3, 2016

andrew-nowak commented Aug 16, 2016

gipert commented Oct 19, 2016

tomibennett commented Dec 14, 2016

mrmowgli commented Apr 13, 2017

akatrevorjay commented Jul 3, 2017

akatrevorjay commented Jul 3, 2017

akatrevorjay commented Jul 3, 2017

akatrevorjay commented Jul 3, 2017

tnguyen14 commented Sep 6, 2017

thulester commented Dec 13, 2017

step- commented Feb 11, 2018

tynrare commented Mar 4, 2018 •

edited

blockloop commented Mar 24, 2018

stevanmilic commented Apr 17, 2018 •

edited

flamendless commented Jun 23, 2018

dlmiyamoto commented Jul 19, 2018

johnchandlerburnham commented Sep 23, 2018 •

edited

patillacode commented Nov 16, 2018

denandaprayoga commented Feb 4, 2019

sdh0618 commented Feb 21, 2019

craftyguy commented Mar 15, 2019

tsoernes commented Mar 21, 2019 •

edited

LinusLaber commented Apr 4, 2019

natanhp commented Mar 3, 2021 •

edited

Some unicode symbols still not displayed with urxvt or xterm #176

Some unicode symbols still not displayed with urxvt or xterm #176

Comments

css459 commented Jun 1, 2016 • edited

n2i commented Jun 27, 2016

css459 commented Jun 27, 2016

n2i commented Jul 3, 2016

andrew-nowak commented Aug 16, 2016

gipert commented Oct 19, 2016

tomibennett commented Dec 14, 2016

mrmowgli commented Apr 13, 2017

akatrevorjay commented Jul 3, 2017

akatrevorjay commented Jul 3, 2017

akatrevorjay commented Jul 3, 2017

akatrevorjay commented Jul 3, 2017

tnguyen14 commented Sep 6, 2017

thulester commented Dec 13, 2017

step- commented Feb 11, 2018

tynrare commented Mar 4, 2018 • edited

blockloop commented Mar 24, 2018

stevanmilic commented Apr 17, 2018 • edited

flamendless commented Jun 23, 2018

dlmiyamoto commented Jul 19, 2018

johnchandlerburnham commented Sep 23, 2018 • edited

patillacode commented Nov 16, 2018

denandaprayoga commented Feb 4, 2019

sdh0618 commented Feb 21, 2019

craftyguy commented Mar 15, 2019

tsoernes commented Mar 21, 2019 • edited

LinusLaber commented Apr 4, 2019

natanhp commented Mar 3, 2021 • edited

UPDATE

css459 commented Jun 1, 2016 •

edited

tynrare commented Mar 4, 2018 •

edited

stevanmilic commented Apr 17, 2018 •

edited

johnchandlerburnham commented Sep 23, 2018 •

edited

tsoernes commented Mar 21, 2019 •

edited

natanhp commented Mar 3, 2021 •

edited