Font Configuration

Support
1

Hey everybody!

I’ve reached the point in my efforts to configure OM where I’m scripting up my configuration in preparation for install, but I’m having trouble getting fonts configured properly.

When I configure the fonts, I prefer to set KDE Plasma to use Serif, Sans-Serif, and Monospace, and then redefine what those are via /etc/fonts/local.conf.

If I do an fc-match -a | grep "Libertinus", the font I’m looking for is there:

fc-match -a | grep "Libertinus Sans"
LibertinusSans-Regular.otf: "Libertinus Sans" "Regular"
LibertinusSans-Bold.otf: "Libertinus Sans" "Bold"
LibertinusSans-Italic.otf: "Libertinus Sans" "Italic"

If I make the simplest /etc/fonts/local.conf there is, it would look like this:

      <?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>IosevkaTermSlab Nerd Font Mono</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Libertinus Sans</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

According to the docs, this should reset Monospace to Iosevka Term Slab and Sans-Serif to Libertinus Sans, system-wide. But it’s having no effect. Even after making this change and rebooting, I still get this:

fc-match sans-serif
URWGothic-Book.otf: "URW Gothic" "Book"

The fonts are definitely installed, and they appear properly in KDE’s System Settings → Text & Fonts → Font Management screen. They also work fine in LibreOffice.

Does anybody know what’s happening here? Thanks for your help!

  • OpenMandriva Lx version: ROME

  • Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…): KDE Plasma

2

I do not have Nerd Fonts, except for the one that I installed after the fact.

3

Update on this; I was trying to figure out why this works everywhere else, but it wasn’t working on OpenMandriva, so I compared OM’s font configuration to both Arch and Fedora. I haven’t figured out exactly where the problem is, but in OM’s /etc/fonts/conf.d there are a whole bunch of 25-urw*.conf files that don’t exist in the other distributions.

Taking a “hail Mary” approach, I moved all these files out of the folder, logged out, logged in, and the configuration was working! This means one or more of those custom files disables local.conf from taking effect on OM.

This is a bug. I can do more investigation and try to determine which of those 25-urw*.conf files is the problem, but they don’t exist on other distros. Does anybody know why they’re there? It may be safe simply to remove them from the fontconfig package.

1 Like
4

Bug report filed: Font config contains specific aliasing that prevents user customization via local.conf · Issue #3204 · OpenMandrivaAssociation/distribution · GitHub

2 Likes
5

Thank you!

6

urw and/or liberation fonts are installed for metric compatibility with (i.e., as replacements for) websafe fonts like Arial/Times/Courier with urw providing additional replacements for fonts like palatino and bookman.

I think it is not a bug because the behavior is normal as per priority set. The files are set as 25-urw* compared to 51-local.conf. To test, you could rename the urw conf files to higher number than 51, say 65-urw* and check.

Personally I do not alter them system-wide but only for myself under ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/60-latin.conf.

Edit: Sorry, had not checked the bug report before replying. You already knew what I wrote and the issue has been fixed as well. It is indeed 61-urw* on my install.

1 Like
7

@suivue Welcome! We are happy to see you and hope that you will decide to make this your home.