Bug 1815128

Summary: Degree sign and other symbols not showing correctly in R graphics on Fedora 31/32
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Giorgio Comai <g>
Component: RAssignee: Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 31CC: caillon+fedoraproject, deekej, fonts-bugs, gnome-sig, i18n-bugs, i.ucar86, john.j5live, mclasen, pwu, rhughes, rstrode, sandmann, tagoh, tcallawa, zdohnal
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Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: R-3.6.3-2.fc31 Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
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Last Closed: 2020-05-13 07:37:11 UTC Type: Bug
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Exampe of wrong output none

Description Giorgio Comai 2020-03-19 14:44:32 UTC 
Created attachment 1671482 [details]
Exampe of wrong output

Description of problem:

When using libraries that refer to the degree sign in graphics - ° - in the R programming language e.g. to express coordinates an unrelated symbol appears.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Reproducible.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. install R-core
2. start R
3. run e.g. "plot.new(); text(0.5,0.5, bquote(120*degree*N), cex=5)"

Actual results:
garbled sign instead of ° sign

Expected results:
actual ° sign


Additional info:
Issue on SO with more details:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60656445/how-to-fix-degree-symbol-not-showing-correctly-in-r-on-linux-fedora-31

Tested with a fresh install of Fedora 32 beta, with the same result. This was not an issue with Fedora 30 and earlier.

I am unsure if this is an issue with the symbol fonts themselves - apparently "urw-base35-standard-symbols-ps-fonts" - or with the R libraries that use them, e.g. "R-Cairo"

More details on fonts in R inthis context, e.g. here: https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/grDevices/versions/3.6.2/topics/x11
Comment 1 Giorgio Comai 2020-03-20 08:43:56 UTC 
Move to 'pango', as this seems to be a regression. 

The issue does not appear if pango is downgraded w.g. with - sudo dnf downgrade --releasever 30 pango-1.43.0-4.fc30.x86_64

The reason may be as detailed in this SO answer:

> pango was upgraded to 1.44, which affects bitmap fonts like the default R-Studio font due to the switch from Freetype to HarfBuzz
https://stackoverflow.com/a/60733863/4124601

Either way, if this prevents all R users on Fedora from having symbols in default graphics, it would be great to have it solved at the package level.
Comment 2 Peng Wu 2020-03-23 04:20:45 UTC 
In pango 1.44, pango switch to use harfbuzz and dropped Adobe Type 1 font support.

We suggest to use makeotf from Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType
to convert the PostScript fonts to OpenType fonts.
URL: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1809918

Before that, maybe you could try to use makeotf to convert the fonts,
and install the fonts into ~/.local/share/fonts/ .
Maybe the above conversion can make the Degree sign work again.
Comment 3 Iñaki Ucar 2020-03-29 19:37:03 UTC 
This should be moved to "R" instead of "pango". See https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2020-March/079186.html for a detailed explanation on what's the issue. Paul Murrell is already working on a fix for R: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2020-March/079230.html
Comment 4 Iñaki Ucar 2020-03-29 20:02:21 UTC 
Upstream issue: https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17748
Comment 5 Fedora Update System 2020-05-04 20:22:15 UTC 
FEDORA-2020-4463b97145 has been submitted as an update to Fedora 31. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2020-4463b97145
Comment 6 Fedora Update System 2020-05-05 04:40:59 UTC 
FEDORA-2020-4463b97145 has been pushed to the Fedora 31 testing repository.
In short time you'll be able to install the update with the following command:
`sudo dnf upgrade --enablerepo=updates-testing --advisory=FEDORA-2020-4463b97145`
You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2020-4463b97145

See also https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for more information on how to test updates.
Comment 7 Fedora Update System 2020-05-13 07:37:11 UTC 
FEDORA-2020-4463b97145 has been pushed to the Fedora 31 stable repository.
If problem still persists, please make note of it in this bug report.