Monospaced font not shown correctly (Xubuntu 20.04)

-----Original Message-----
From: R-help [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Viechtbauer,
Wolfgang (SP)
Sent: Wednesday, 20 January, 2021 9:44
To: Paul Murrell; r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Monospaced font not shown correctly (Xubuntu 20.04)

Dear Paul,

Thanks for the helpful reply. Indeed:

fc-match Times

NimbusRoman-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Roman" "Regular"

fc-match Helvetica

NimbusSans-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Sans" "Regular"

are OpenType fonts. Also:

X11(type="Xlib", family="mono")
plot(1)

works. So does

X11(family="Courier New") # type="cairo" by default
plot(1)

or

X11(family="Inconsolata")
plot(1)

Can I not override what is specified under X11Fonts() with? Because this
does not work:

X11Fonts(mono="-*-inconsolata-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*")
X11(family="mono")
plot(1)

Best,
Wolfgang

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Murrell [mailto:paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz]
Sent: Wednesday, 20 January, 2021 0:37
To: Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP); r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Monospaced font not shown correctly (Xubuntu 20.04)

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-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"