bad font rendering; excessive kerning

Describe your issue

The default font rendering seems to be messed up; there's some huge kerning:

What's the expected behaviour?

Font should render normally.

What's the current behaviour?

There's a huge amount of space between letters.

How to reproduce your issue?

1. pmbootstrap init
2. Device: qemu-amd64 image, User interface: sway.
3. pmbootstrap install
4. pmbootstrap qemu --image-size=2G
5. Wait for VM to start
6. Run foot by pressing Alt+Return.

What device are you using?

qemu-amd64

On what postmarketOS version did you encounter the issue?

• edge (master branch)

• v24.06

• I confirm that the issue still is present after running sudo apk upgrade -a

On what environment did you encounter the issue?

Environments

sway

How did you get postmarketOS image?

• from https://images.postmarketos.org
• I built it using pmbootstrap
• It was preinstalled on my device

I followed the steps at: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:QEMU#Usage

What's the build date of the image? (in yyyy-mm-dd format)

Built 2024-11-20.

Additional information

> foot -dinfo
info: main.c:409: version: 1.19.0 +pgo +ime +graphemes +toplevel-icon -assertions
info: main.c:416: arch: Linux x86_64/64-bit
info: main.c:433: locale: en_DK.UTF-8
info: config.c:3345: loading configuration from /etc/xdg/foot/foot.ini
info: fcft.c:338: fcft: 3.1.9 +graphemes +runs +svg(nanosvg) -assertions
info: fcft.c:377: fontconfig: 2.15.0, freetype: 2.13.3, harfbuzz: 9.0.0, utf8proc: 2.9.0 (Unicode 15.1.0)
info: fcft.c:865: /usr/share/fonts/droid-nonlatin/DroidNaskh-Regular-SystemUI.ttf: size=8.00pt/8.33px, dpi=75.00
warn: config.c:3751: Droid Naskh Shift Alt: font does not appear to be monospace; check your config, or disable this warning by setting [tweak].font-monospace-warn=no
warn: wayland.c:1619: compositor does not implement the XDG toplevel icon protocol
info: wayland.c:1634: Virtual-1: 2292x1562+0x0@60Hz QEMU Monitor 27.52" scale=3, DPI=100.80/100.76 (physical/scaled)
info: wayland.c:1843: requesting SSD decorations
info: fcft.c:865: /usr/share/fonts/droid/DroidSerif-BoldItalic.ttf: size=24.00pt/32.00px, dpi=96.00
info: fcft.c:865: /usr/share/fonts/droid/DroidSans-Bold.ttf: size=24.00pt/32.00px, dpi=96.00
info: fcft.c:865: /usr/share/fonts/droid/DroidSerif-Italic.ttf: size=24.00pt/32.00px, dpi=96.00
info: fcft.c:865: /usr/share/fonts/droid-nonlatin/DroidNaskh-Regular-SystemUI.ttf: size=24.00pt/32.00px, dpi=96.00
info: terminal.c:838: cell width=29, height=43
info: terminal.c:693: using 24 rendering threads
info: wayland.c:1048: using SSD decorations
info: main.c:672: goodbye

Apparently, foot is trying to use /usr/share/fonts/droid-nonlatin/DroidNaskh-Regular-SystemUI.ttf, which is not a monospace font.

/usr/share/fonts/droid/DroidSansMono.ttf is right there, not sure why foot isn't preferring that one.

Ah yeah experienced that issue to. I opened !5799 (closed) which simply depends on font-dejavu, but of course using DroidSansMono.ttf would be even nicer.

I don't think that installing another font is necessary; the problem is that foot is using the wrong font.

Maybe the proper fontconfig files are missing, or not being linked properly?

Yeah, i think the fontconfig was simply missing. I believe it would be fixed with: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/merge_requests/75542

changed title from qemu-amd64: bad font rendering; excessive kerning to bad font rendering; excessive kerning

changed milestone to %v24.12 Release

added release-edge type::bug ui-i3wm ui-sway labels

BTW: also on bare-metal; and i think this should be fixed before the 24.12 release.

Yeah, this sounds like a purely software bug (e.g.: unrelated to device).

/cc @omasanori since you did stuff around fonts. maybe you know what's going on?

mentioned in merge request !5799 (closed)

The MR is merged and this is issue should be fixed now.

closed

I can confirm that the issue is now fixed. Thanks!