Bug 447322

The problem is now happening with openoffice. I had previously not installed the
Chinese support package for openoffice, and it was running as if the default
language was English. After installing the package
openoffice.org-langpack-zh_CN-1:2.4.0-12.8.fc9 (x86_64), the default language
for openoffice switched to Chinese, but it has the same menu item font problem
described above. When I uninstalled the language package, openoffice stayed in
Chinese and the font rendering problem remained.

So it appears that this is not just a kde3 issue. But it does not affect gnome
apps or kde4 apps.

I've discovered that the problem seems to have been caused by the configuration
file of the following font package:
wqy-bitmap-fonts-0.9.9.fc9 (noarch)

The fonts are superior to the standard Chinese fonts in most linux systems, but
the configuration file:
/etc/fonts/conf.d/61-wqy-bitmapsong.conf
seems to be problematic with regard to non-gnome apps' use of the fonts.
Changing the name of the configuration file causes the system to use standard
Chinese fonts in all apps (if those fonts are installed). Restoring the name of
the configuration file causes gnome apps to work normally, but non-gnome apps
sometimes do not use the proper fonts. 

In previous editions of fedora, there was a similar problem in running kde
programs in a Chinese gnome system. At that time, the kde apps would display
empty squares to denote missing fonts. The new edition of fedora does not
display empty squares, but a sort of blur, as shown in the screenshot attached. 

I am not sure why gnome and kde apps respond to Chinese fonts differently. Each
appears to look for the fonts in different places. KDE4 has an excellent font
manager which seems to alleviate this problem, but gnome and kde3 lack this
function.

I am attaching the problematic configuration file here (which, again, works for
gnome apps). I will send this to the creator of the wqy Chinese fonts as well. 

Per  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=230560#c30
"the provided fontconfig file allows the synergy of this bitmap 
font with other existing vector fonts at specific font sizes, which is a highly
desired feature and make web page display very pleasing."  

I guess "desired feature" is sometimes subjective. :)

imo, we should consider punting this over to wqy-bitmap-fonts maintainer(s), to
see what they think.

here is my reply to Saul's email. I would be glad to watch this bug if more
input is given.

==============================================
hi Saul

this is a strange problem. Frankly, I only see similar problems twice:

1) two years ago, Nvidia driver before 8754 will produce similar effect,
i.e.
for any Chinese fonts that embeds bitmaps, it will randomly show garbled
squares, select by mouse will recover. I had an early screen shot
uploaded in our gallery:
http://wenq.org/gallery/displayimage.php?album=4&pos=1

2) when I overwrite wqy's font by an updated fonts fonts (I did that
regularly
for testing purpose), if I don't restart X, it may give some funny lookings.

I see nothing wrong in 61-wqy-bitmapfont.conf: all are supported
features of fontconfig. Plus that it was working fine for the past 3 years.

so, that's all that I know. I doublt this is related to
61-wqy-bitmapfonts.conf,
it looks like either the driver problem, or KDE problem. but I am not
entirely sure (I am using Xfce4/GNOME as my desktop, don't have
this problem recently.)

I will be glad to follow closely with this bug, if you have more info or
feedback, please also let me know.

thanks

Qianqian

*** Bug 449270 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I am the reporter of bug 449270 (my wqy fonts display badly too).   
I will add that my system uses NVidia as well. 
The version number of the Nvidia driver I am using is
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.05, for an nVidia Corporation NV44A [GeForce 6200] (rev a1).

I tried using other NVIDIA drivers, to find out whether the font would display
correctly with them.
However, I could not test them:   NVIDIA Drivers version 171.xx did not even
compile on my current F9 kernel (2.6.25.3-18.fc9.i686).    Driver version
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08 did compile, but when I launched X, it would load up.
I went back to 173.14.05, which does compile, and allows X to run, but the font
still displays wrongly.   

Ah,  so anyone seeing this, please report back what video hw/driver you're using.

Folks using NVidia driver, please try to confirm using fedora's nv driver, else
we'll have not much choice but to lay blame on the closed source driver here.

Thanks for the suggeston, Rex:    I just ran my Xwindows with the "nv" driver
instead of NVIDIA's own driver...  and the problem goes away.    

The fact that this problem seems to have surfaced with FC9 makes me think that
the NVIDIA problem appears with the new kernel in F9 (2.6.25.3-18.fc9.i686).

It could also be just a coincidence, because I only used the new driver
(NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.05) at the same time I upgraded to F9.  (my F8 system
was using a previous driver version).

I will try to report this problem to NVIDIA as well.

Thanks for your investigation, you can report the bug to NVidia using the info
from here:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46678

I am running Fedora 9 on my Thinkpad Z60 which uses ATI graphics card, and
experiencing the same problem of displaying chinese fonts. So I don't think this
problem is specific to Nvidia cards. I met this problem in QT3-based
applications and even in GVim.

The new nVidia driver fixes the font corruption problem:
  http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_173.14.09.html

They report that the nVidia problem appears with X.org 1.5

Xiong: It may be that ATI has similar problems with X.org 1.5...

I get this problem with my ATI Radeon 200M integrated graphics card.