[Rd] Plotmath on Fedora 31 broken with with pango >= 1.44 - workarounds?

[Gabriel Becker]

Paul et al,

I will try to do this tonight or tomorrow, though it will not be built with
th system tools because I have yet to get that tto work locally (spent a
good chunk of this morning trying).

I will send a separate messaage regarding those difficulties as well so
that we can at least confirm that they are due to a malconfiguration on my
part.

Best,
~G

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 7:25 PM Paul Murrell <paul using stat.auckland.ac.nz>
wrote:

>
> 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.mailhot using 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
> >>>>
> >>>> ______________________________________________
> >>>> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> >>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >>>>
> >>
> >
>
> --
> Dr Paul Murrell
> Department of Statistics
> The University of Auckland
> Private Bag 92019
> Auckland
> New Zealand
> 64 9 3737599 x85392
> paul using stat.auckland.ac.nz
> http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
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>

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