Wine and Fontconfig

[Yaron Shahrabani]

Elad, an Hebrew user suggests:

In several Wine apps Hebrew is displayed as square glyphs since there are no
builting Hebrew glyphs in Wine's font (bug #23537).

The question is why does Wine use the internal font as the default? The
easier solution would be to use the "system" fonts as configured in
fontconfig.
Windows can have a custom font as well so it shouldn't cause and difficulty.
This way we won't have to look for a font editing specialist that will add
glyphs to wine's fonts.
This problem can affect many languages as well, not just Hebrew, that lacks
the required glyphs.
Using the fonts from fontconfig might solve the problem and will lead to a
better integreation. The fonts in Wine apps will look just like the fonts
used by the rest of the apps in the system.

Kind regards,
Yaron Shahrabani

<Hebrew translator>

[Scott Ritchie]

On 01/03/2011 03:44 PM, Yaron Shahrabani wrote:
> Elad, an Hebrew user suggests:
>
> In several Wine apps Hebrew is displayed as square glyphs since there
> are no builting Hebrew glyphs in Wine's font (bug #23537).
>
> The question is why does Wine use the internal font as the default? The
> easier solution would be to use the "system" fonts as configured in
> fontconfig.
> Windows can have a custom font as well so it shouldn't cause and difficulty.
> This way we won't have to look for a font editing specialist that will
> add glyphs to wine's fonts.
> This problem can affect many languages as well, not just Hebrew, that
> lacks the required glyphs.
> Using the fonts from fontconfig might solve the problem and will lead to
> a better integreation. The fonts in Wine apps will look just like the
> fonts used by the rest of the apps in the system.
>
> Kind regards,
> YaronShahrabani
> <Hebrew translator>

Yes, using fontconfig for font substitution is something Wine's needed
for a while, similar issues exist for CJK fonts.

What font does Windows use for Hebrew text?  Ideally we could link to a
free metric-compatible replacement (even if we didn't ship it with
Wine); in lieu of fontconfig substitution manual registry links will be
needed however.  In Ubuntu I've made similar aliases for CJK fonts so
they at least render text; I understand Crossover does something similar
as well.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie