[Fontconfig] How to delete "ja" lang from a specific font?

Mon Oct 6 10:43:31 PDT 2008

an ugly fix would be adding the following block to your ~/.fonts.conf,
replacing "Kochi Gothic" with your favorite Japanese font.

        <match target="pattern">
           <test equal="any" compare="eq" name="family">
                   <string>WenQuanYi Zen Hei</string>
           </test>
           <test equal="any" compare="eq" name="lang">
                   <string>ja</string>
           </test>
           <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
                   <string>Kochi Gothic</string>
           </edit>
       </match>

The best solution would be re-optimize the font rendering order
in 65-nonlatin.conf by fontconfig upstream, which I have heard
that Badhad is doing it right now. An earlier reply I sent to Frederic
Crozat (Mandriva), from whom I heard the plan, I had a little
proposal. My reply is attached.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: Fwd: issue with 85-wqy-bitmapsong.conf file in fontconfig
Date: 	Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:56:58 -0400
From: 	Qianqian Fang <fangq at nmr.mgh.harvard.edu>
To: 	Funda Wang <fundawang at gmail.com>, fcrozat at mandriva.com
References: 	<1219740133.6380.89.camel at trinidad.mandrakesoft.com> 
<e7f875700808260202n4b858a6v3e191683319c8784 at mail.gmail.com> 
<e7f875700808260204s2fcb79k74729be5cba0f995 at mail.gmail.com>

hi Frederic and Funda

Bedhad and I had similar discussions last year on this issue, please
read the followings posts for my explanations:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2007-November/msg00062.html 

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2007-December/msg00002.html 

The reason for writing this controversial config file is to
compensate the fact that fontconfig upstream has given too high
priority to Japanese fonts and Uming for display Chinese
under either non-CJK locales and CJK locales.

The Hanzi glyphs in most free Japanese fonts are generally
low in quality (comparing with commercial Japanese/Chinese
fonts). There are also 10s of thousands of missing characters
in Unicode CJK block (GB2312+Big5 requires 16000 Hanzi, GBK
requires 20932 Hanzi, but JIS only covers 6000 Hanzi). Because
Japanese fonts (Micho,Gothic etc) have higher priority by default,
when viewing Chinese articles under non-CJK locales (such as
en_US, my default locale), the Chinese text will be displayed
by mosaics of various of fonts: Micho, Gothic, Uming, Ukai, unifont etc.
This is very annoying and complained widely in Chinese Linux forums.
There are also common-script issues from Pango as Funda pointed out
troubling many CJK users, see
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2007-December/msg00013.html

For 9pt-12pt font sizes, register bitmap-song before all Japanese
fonts, while below the default Latin vector fonts (Dejavu/Bitstream)
is my original intent with this config file (without requiring fontconfig
upsteam to change their font order). But now, if Bedhad is willing to
reconsider font orders, we do not need this config file at all.
(because the wqy's bitmap fonts are extensively improved version
of those embedded in Uming, we also want bitmap-song
has higher priority than Uming between 9-12pt).

My preferences for Chinese font display order for screen-use will be

for non-(Japanese/Korean) locales:
Latin fonts > Chinese Hei Ti (wqy-zenhei) > wqy-bitmap-song > Uming > 
Ukai > Japanese fonts
      (uming/ukai were good for printing, but not screen use)

for Japanese/Korean locales:
 Latin fonts > Japanese/Korean fonts > Chinese Hei Ti (wqy-zenhei) > 
wqy-bitmap-song > Uming > Ukai

In Ubuntu, the default Chinese fonts were ordered for Sans and Serif 
separately,where wqy-zenhei is the default Sans Chinese font, and Uming 
is the default Serif font, that also works for me, except that I 
want wqy-bitmap-song goes before Uming between 9-12pt.

Qianqian

Funda Wang wrote:
> 2008/8/26 Frederic Crozat <fcrozat at mandriva.com>:
>   
>> Hi Funda,
>>
>> Bedhad (pango maintainer and fontconfig co-maintainer) has started
>> reviewing our Mandriva fontconfig configuration to see what he could
>> merge in upstream fontconfig (the ultimate goal would be to have no
>> changes in our package).
>>
>> He noticed 85-wqy-bitmapsong.conf file was forcing WenQuanYi Bitmap Song
>> font, even for en and en-US language. Is it really wanted ?
>>     
> This fontconfig file comes from upstream. Personally, I don't think
> WenQuanYi Bitmap Song should be singled out. Maybe we could discuss it
> with WenQuanYi maintainer (CC'ed).
>
> In fact, the displaying result we want is descibed extensively in
> gnome bug#321113, which bedhad should already know. As pango does not
> want to get the bug solved, the only method for now is using ugly
> fontconfig rules.
>
>   
>> Thanks in advance for your reply.
>> --
>> Frederic Crozat <fcrozat at mandriva.com>
>> Mandriva

Kenichi Handa wrote:
> I installed the font "WenQuanYi Zen Hei" by the debian
> package "ttf-wqy-zenhei".  The font convers many Han glyphs
> including Japanese specific ones. 
>
> % fc-list 'WenQuanYi Zen Hei' lang
>
> shows this list:
>
> :lang=aa|af|ast|ava|ay|be|bg|bi|br|ca|ce|ch|co|da|de|el|en|es|eu|fj|fo|fr|fur|fy|gd|gl|gv|ho|ia|id|ie|ik|io|is|it|ja|ko|kum|lb|lez|mg|nb|nds|nl|nn|no|nr|ny|oc|om|os|pt|rm|ru|sel|sh|sm|sma|smj|so|sq|sr|ss|st|sv|sw|to|ts|vo|wa|wo|xh|yap|zh-cn|zh-hk|zh-mo|zh-sg|zh-tw|zu
>
> But, as Japanese glyphs are not good, I'd like to remove
> "ja" from that language list.  Could someone please tell me
> how to write ~/.fonts.conf for that?
>
> ---
> Kenichi Handa
> handa at ni.aist.go.jp
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>   