Wine and Fontconfig

[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