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<mark_weaver>is there any particular reason that we packaged bitstream vera, and not dejavu (which is derived from bitstream vera but supports more languages as I recall)?

<civodul>mark_weaver: no particular reason, i think

<civodul>i think i added Vera because that was the one i knew

<mark_weaver>I'm using dejavu, and it includes jxself's musical notes just fine :)

<civodul>ah, then that's interesting :-)

<civodul>my font lacks 266B but has the other one

<civodul>and yes, it's Vera

<civodul>so there's a font name dejavu?

<civodul>how are we gonna find it? :-)

<mark_weaver> http://packages.debian.org/dejavu

<civodul>ok

<civodul>to me dejavu is the file format, hence my question

<mark_weaver> http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page

<mark_weaver>hmm, do we already have a dejavu package?

<civodul>good

<civodul>no

<mark_weaver>(for the file format support)?

<civodul>nothing called dejavu

<mark_weaver>okay.

<mark_weaver>yeah, too bad the name refers to two different things in the free software world.

<a_e>Do you know where icecat gets its fonts from?

<a_e>I did not add fontconfig as an input; maybe that is a mistake?

<mark_weaver>a_e: I would assume that it uses whatever fonts are specified by the web site, with the defaults specified in the browser's default CSS stylesheets.

<mark_weaver>but I don't really know for sure.

<civodul>also it's the kind of package that incorporates everything it needs

<a_e>In any case, it does not render many characters.

<a_e>If you look at a Japanese wikipedia page with the icecat in guix, you get a page full of placeholders

<a_e>Icecat does use fontconfig; when starting it, a fontconfig warning is displayed.

<civodul>good hint :-)

<a_e>Nothing serious, fortunately.

<a_e>Another warning is this:

<a_e>(icecat:7599): Gtk-WARNING **: Could not find the icon 'gtk-go-back-ltr'. The 'hicolor' theme

<a_e>was not found either, perhaps you need to install it.

<a_e>You can get a copy from:

<a_e> http://icon-theme.freedesktop.org/releases

<a_e>Should we add hicolor-icon-theme (which we have) as a propagated input to icecat?

<a_e>Should we add fontconfig as a propagated input?

<civodul>what the search rule for icon themes?

<civodul>*what's

<a_e>No idea; what do you mean?

<a_e>As soon as I install hicolor-icon-theme, the warning disappears.

<civodul>but do you have $XDG_DATA_DIR set or something like that?

<a_e>Yes, XDG_DATA_DIRS=$HOME/.guix-profile/share

<civodul>that's probably the thing

<civodul>hicolor-icon-theme could be propagated in that case, but still, "guix package --search-path" doesn't tell you do change $XDG_DATA_DIRS

<civodul>*to change

<a_e>Indeed. Would it be something to add somewhere in the code?

<a_e>Fontconfig does strange things in my system. I installed gs-fonts (they end up in ~/.guix-profile/fonts/type1/ghostcript) and freefont-ttf (they end up in ~/.guix-profile/share/fonts/truetype).

<a_e>fc-cache; fc-list

<a_e>lists the former, but not the latter.

<a_e>fc-query .guix-profile/share/fonts/truetype/FreeMono.ttf

<a_e>seems to work

<civodul>didn't know these commands

<a_e>Me neither, so I am not sure to use them correctly; but they are part of the binaries of fontconfig, which all start with "fc-".

<a_e>Hm, in another profile I installed first the truetype fonts, then ran fc-list; then installed gs-fonts and ran fc-cache and fc-list. Now only the truetype fonts are found.

<a_e>It looks like cleaning the cache does not work!

<mark_weaver>I guess maybe there's some directory of fonts that needs to be merged when a profile is created.

<a_e>There might be a time stamp issue. fc-cache scans only new directories.

<a_e>But $HOME/.guix-profile/share/fonts/truetype is a symlink to /nix/store/ddvifpsm3yr99spi2bc6hy5x1ip6hnr7-freefont-ttf-20100919/share/fonts/truetype and has a date of 1 Jan 1970.

<a_e>I suppose this is considered old so that the cache is up-to-date.

<a_e>fc-cache -r

<mark_weaver>where does 'fc-cache' write its cache?

<a_e>rescans and finds the fonts.

<a_e>Hm, then it cannot be a timestamp issue.

<a_e>I am confusing with the -f option to force scanning regardless of time stamps.

<a_e>mark_weaver: I do not knowl accoding to the man page, into

<a_e>%cachdir%/*-%arch%.cache-2

<mark_weaver>'strace' could be used to find out.

<a_e>$HOME/.guix-profile/etc/fonts/fonts.conf contain

<a_e>s

<mark_weaver>it seems like it would be good to handle this automatically somehow, if the cache can be put into the profile.

<a_e>

<a_e>

<a_e> <cachedir>/nix/store/2kwl0s2363mkw5p0bv5cgapm62m0r7pn-fontconfig-2.10.93/var/cache/fontconfig</cachedir>

<a_e> <cachedir prefix="xdg">fontconfig</cachedir>

<a_e>

<a_e> <cachedir>~/.fontconfig</cachedir>

<a_e>

<a_e> <config>

<mark_weaver>I wonder what "<cachedir prefix="xdg">fontconfig</cachedir>" becomes.

<mark_weaver>that seems the most promising, because I'd guess that it turns into $XDG_??/fontconfig

<a_e>I think it becomes $HOME/.cache/fontconfig. If I delete it, then files show up there after running fc-cache.

<a_e>fc-cache --verbose -r outputs (among others):

<mark_weaver>if so, it seems like it would be good to advise the user to set $XDG_?? to somewhere in the profile, and then arrange to create that font cache automatically when profiles are created.

<a_e>nix/store/2kwl0s2363mkw5p0bv5cgapm62m0r7pn-fontconfig-2.10.93/var/cache/fontconfig: not cleaning unwritable cache directory

<a_e>.cache/fontconfig: cleaning cache directory

<a_e>.fontconfig: not cleaning non-existent cache directory

<a_e>This corresponds to the three directories in the config file.

<mark_weaver>I suspect that $HOME/.cache is being used as a fallback if the relevant $XDG_?? environment variable isn't set.

<a_e>I think that is the default, indeed.

<a_e>It is okay to keep $HOME/.cache.

<a_e>But one should then, after creating a user profile, run "fc-cache -r" if the profile contains fontconfig.

<mark_weaver>that seems suboptimal to me.

<mark_weaver>ah, I think $XDG_CACHE_HOME is the relevant variable.

<mark_weaver>a_e: can you try setting that variable, and seeing if 'fc-cache' honors it?

<a_e>XDG_CACHE_HOME cannot be set to $HOME/.guix-profile/cache, for instance; it is a symlink to a user profile that belongs to root.guix-builder and that cannot be written by the user.

<a_e>$HOME/.guix-profile is a symlink, I mean.

<mark_weaver>well, the idea is that 'fc-cache' would be run when the profile was created, and the cache would be put there.

<a_e>fc-cache does honour XDG_CACHE_HOME.

<a_e>But this is not needed:

<mark_weaver>and if the user installs fonts outside of guix, then the cache for those would be in ~/.fontconfig/

<a_e>We can keep XDG_CACHE_HOME as it is, and add a line

<mark_weaver>but what would we put on that line?

<a_e><cachedir>~/.guix-profile/cache</cachedir>

<a_e>into fonts.conf.

<a_e>Then we need to run fc-cache at the creation of the profile.

<mark_weaver>well, that hardcodes ~/.guix-profile, whereas Guix allows each user to have multiple profiles.

<a_e>User installed fonts would be cached into $HOME/.cache as usual.

<a_e>Actually, we already hard-code the font directory with a line

<mark_weaver>although I admit that my proposed solution isn't perfect either.

<a_e><dir>~/.guix-profile/share/fonts</dir>

IRC channel logs

2013-12-11.log