[R] Monospaced font not shown correctly (Xubuntu 20.04)

[Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP)]

Hi all,

On my system (Xubuntu 20.04), using par(family="mono") is not rendered correctly. The same issue was raised here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64207220/rendering-plot-in-r-with-mono-spaced-family-font-does-not-display-characters-any

Using par(family="monospace") does work:

par(mfrow=c(1,2))
par(family="mono")
plot(1)
par(family="monospace")
plot(1)

Also, when saving to pdf, it works fine:

pdf("plot.pdf"); par(family="mono"); plot(1); dev.off()

I have forced a refresh of the font cache:

fc-cache -r --verbose --really-force

And Courier is available:

> fc-list | grep Courier

/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1/c0419bt_.pfb: Courier 10 Pitch:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/type1/texlive-fonts-recommended/pcrb8a.pfb: Courier:style=Bold
/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1/c0611bt_.pfb: Courier 10 Pitch:style=Bold Italic
/usr/share/fonts/type1/texlive-fonts-recommended/pcrr8a.pfb: Courier:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1/c0582bt_.pfb: Courier 10 Pitch:style=Italic
/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1/c0583bt_.pfb: Courier 10 Pitch:style=Bold
/usr/share/fonts/type1/texlive-fonts-recommended/pcrro8a.pfb: Courier:style=Italic
/usr/share/fonts/type1/texlive-fonts-recommended/pcrbo8a.pfb: Courier:style=Bold Italic

Any other ideas how to fix this?

Best,
Wolfgang

(happy to move this to R-SIG-Debian if this would be more appropriate)

> sessionInfo()
R version 4.0.3 (2020-10-10)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libblas.so.3
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/liblapack.so.3

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C               LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8       
 [4] LC_COLLATE=C               LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                  LC_ADDRESS=C              
[10] LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_4.0.3 tools_4.0.3   

> X11Fonts()
$serif
[1] "-*-times-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$sans
[1] "-*-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$mono
[1] "-*-courier-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$Times
[1] "-adobe-times-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$Helvetica
[1] "-adobe-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$CyrTimes
[1] "-cronyx-times-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$CyrHelvetica
[1] "-cronyx-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$Arial
[1] "-monotype-arial-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$Mincho
[1] "-*-mincho-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"