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

[Paul Murrell]

Hi

The switch to XUbunutu 20.04 may mean a switch to Pango > 1.44 (it does 
on Ubuntu 20.04), which means loss of support for Type 1 fonts (on 
Cairo-based graphics devices).

The Courier fonts (the default for "mono" on Cairo-based devices) that 
you found are all Type 1 (.pfb) fonts.

What does this give you (the matches for the default "sans" and "serif" 
on Cairo-based devices) ... ?

fc-match Times
fc-match Helvetica

If those are .ttf or .otf fonts then that would explain why "sans" and 
"serif" still work.

A workaround is to specify the family name for a non-Type-1 monospaced 
font, e.g., "Courier New" (?), or install a non-Type-1 Courier 
replacement (and specify that).

Hope that helps.

Paul

On 20/01/21 3:48 am, Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP) wrote:
> 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 
> <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-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
> 
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-- 
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/