[Rd] One possible cause for incorrect symbols in X11() output

[Prof Brian Ripley]

If you have more than one element in a fonts.conf file you need to 
group them, e.g.

<fontconfig>
<match target="pattern">
   <test name="family"><string>Symbol</string></test>
   <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
     <string>Standard Symbols L</string>
   </edit>
</match>

<alias binding="same">
        <family>ZapfDingbats</family>
        <accept><family>Dingbats</family></accept>
</alias>
</fontconfig>


On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Gavin Simpson wrote:

> On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 07:55 +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> There have been spasmodic reports of symbols such as pi and infinity
>> in plotmath being reproduced incorrectly on the X11 device on some
>> Linux systems (at least Ubuntu 10 and Fedora 12/13), and we've managed
>> to track down one cause whilst investigating PR#14355.
>>
>> Some systems have Wine and hence the Wine symbol font installed.
>> 'fontconfig', which is used by cairographics in X11(type='cairo') and
>> many other applications, prefers the Wine symbol font to the standard
>> Type 1 URW font, and seems to misinterpret its encoding.
>>
>> You may well have Wine installed without realizing it (as I did) -- it
>> is increasingly common as a dependency of other software. The best
>> test is to run
>>
>> % fc-match symbol
>> s050000l.pfb: "Standard Symbols L" "Regular"
>>
>> This is the result on a system without Wine: if you see
>>
>> % fc-match symbol
>> symbol.ttf: "Symbol" "Regular"
>>
>> you at least potentially have the problem.  A good test is to look at
>> ?points and run the function TestChars() defined there as
>>
>> TestChars(font=5)
>>
>> If you do have the problem, a workaround is to add the following lines
>> to ~/.fonts.conf or /etc/fonts/local.conf (which you may need to
>> create):
>>
>> <match target="pattern">
>>    <test name="family"><string>Symbol</string></test>
>>    <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
>>      <string>Standard Symbols L</string>
>>    </edit>
>> </match>
>>
>> and repeat the fc-match test to check that it worked.
>
> Hi,
>
> I tried the suggested change to ~/.fonts.conf but am getting an error
> from fontconfig:
>
> $ fc-match symbol
> Fontconfig error: "~/.fonts.conf", line 10: junk after document element
> s050000l.pfb: "Standard Symbols L" "Regular"
> $ cat ~/.fonts.conf
> <match target="pattern">
>        <test name="family">
>                <string>Symbol</string>
>        </test>
>        <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
>                <string>Standard Symbols L</string>
>        </edit>
> </match>
>
> <alias binding="same">
>       <family>ZapfDingbats</family>
>       <accept><family>Dingbats</family></accept>
> </alias>
>
> I have an alias in there to solve the "q" symbol being used in Evince
> etc in place of pch == 1.
>
> Am I inserting this incorrectly?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> G
>
>>
>> (This workaround was culled from
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fontconfig/+bug/551977
>> )
>>
>
> -- 
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> Dr. Gavin Simpson             [t] +44 (0)20 7679 0522
> ECRC, UCL Geography,          [f] +44 (0)20 7679 0565
> Pearson Building,             [e] gavin.simpsonATNOSPAMucl.ac.uk
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595