The R-symfam branch (r78176) is now working, for my basic tests, on ...
Ubuntu (pango < 1.44)
Ubuntu (no pango)
Fedora (pango > 1.44)
Windows
I need help to confirm that this builds on macOS and that the basic
tests work ...
https://github.com/pmur002/R-symfam-testing
Brian has been helping with the build, but I am still looking for
someone who can run the tests please. Happy to be fed PDF files to
scrutinize myself; it's generating the PDF files on macOS that I need
help with.
Paul
On 6/04/20 2:59 pm, Paul Murrell wrote:
Hi
The R branch ...
https://svn.r-project.org/R/branches/R-symfam/
... is now set up so that it works "out of the box" on Fedora by setting
the default to be 'symbolfamily=cairoSymbolFont(family, usePUA=FALSE)'
when grSoftVersion()["pango"] is greater than "1.44".
This means that on Fedora 31 (at least on the Docker container I am
testing on) "sans"->"NimubusSans" is used as the symbol font by default
and R converts Adobe Symbol Encoding code points to non-PUA UTF8 code
points. This is not the prettiest result, but it is a lot better than
the page full of missing glyphs that we had.
The default on less "bleeding edge" systems, e.g., my Ubuntu 18.04,
remains 'symbolfamily="Symbol"'.
The default on other platforms is supposed to be the same as it was, but
I need help to confirm that. I have set up a github repo ...
https://github.com/pmur002/R-symfam-testing
... that describes how to test this on macOS and Windows if anyone has
time to do so.
I will start trying to set up a Windows test unless someone beats me to it.
Paul
On 30/03/20 3:24 pm, Paul Murrell wrote:
Hi
I have created an R branch that contains a potential fix ...
https://svn.r-project.org/R/branches/R-symfam/
This allows, for example, ...
cairo_pdf(symbolfamily="OpenSymbol")
... to specify that the OpenSymbol family should be used as the
"symbol" font (e.g., for "plotmath") in R.
This is just a separate branch for now because, while I have tested it
under Unbuntu 18.04 and Fedora 31, I cannot even build R for Windows
(right now) or Mac (ever) and I do not want to drop a bomb on R-devel
at this stage of the release process for R 4.0.0.
The attached file contains at least an outline of steps required to do
a minimal test if anyone wants to try the fix on Linux.
cc'ing Simon and Jeroen in case they are able to help with checking
that this builds and works on Mac and/or Windows.
NOTEs:
- 'symbolfamily' can only be specified when a graphics device is
opened, and it is then fixed for that device.
- on Windows, for cairo-based devices, the "symbol" font is still
hard-coded as "Standard Symbols L"
Paul
On 30/03/20 8:15 am, Paul Murrell wrote:
Hi
Thanks for your input on this Iñaki and Nicolas.
I am starting testing an R fix for this problem today.
As suggested, the plan is to allow the R user to specify a font
family other than "symbol" for plotmath output (or, more generally,
in R parlance, for 'font=5' or 'fontface=5') on a Cairo-based
graphics device.
Paul
On 27/03/20 11:30 pm, Iñaki Ucar wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 12:25, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mail...@laposte.net> wrote:
<snip>
R brought this all on itself by hardcoding a Windows-only “Symbol”
font
family name in its default conf. Linux systems are UTF-8 by default
for
~20 years now, they don’t need the forcing of magic font families to
handle symbols not present in the 8-bit legacy Windows encodings.
The actual effect of this conf is not the selection of font files with
special and unusual symbols. It is to priorize fonts that match the
"Symbol" magic name. And those fonts are few and crumbling on Linux
systems, because no one has needed to bother with them since Linux
switched to UTF-8 last millenium.
Just stop using “Symbol” in R and things will work a lot better.
Alternatively, prepare to maintain the “Symbol” aliasing stack in
fontconfig (and fight with wine for it), because *no* *one* *else*
*cares* about this legacy Windows-specific stuff.
So, in the light of Nicolas' input (thanks!), I think that font
selection should be fixed upstream in R. I'd be happy to put all this
together in R's bugzilla, but I don't have an account. Could someone
please invite me?
Iñaki
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Department of Statistics
The University of Auckland
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