Bug 1405240 - anaconda sets same default console font, eurlatgr, for all languages, even ones which cannot use it
Summary: anaconda sets same default console font, eurlatgr, for all languages, even on...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: anaconda
Version: 26
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Anaconda Maintenance Team
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2016-12-15 23:43 UTC by Adam Williamson
Modified: 2018-05-29 11:22 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2018-05-29 11:22:07 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


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Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Bugzilla 1182562 0 unspecified CLOSED Text interface broken for non-latin languages 2021-02-22 00:41:40 UTC
Red Hat Bugzilla 1405598 0 unspecified CLOSED Localized login prompt in emergency mode doesn't help 2021-02-22 00:41:40 UTC

Internal Links: 1182562 1405598

Description Adam Williamson 2016-12-15 23:43:13 UTC
When installing, anaconda writes a /etc/vconsole.conf any time `keyboard.vc_keymap` is set, which I think it pretty much always is (thanks to `populate_missing_items`). Unless I'm missing something, it *always* includes this line:

FONT="eurlatgr"

because the code says:

fobj.write('FONT="%s"\n' % DEFAULT_VC_FONT)

and DEFAULT_VC_FONT is a constant set to 'eurlatgr' in constants.py. In other words, there is no accounting for languages for which eurlatgr is a bad choice.

This is unfortunate, because it means that after doing an install in Russian, Hebrew or Arabic, any translated string on the console will just appear as blobs: eurlatgr has no support for Cyrillic, Hebrew or Arabic characters.

DEFAULT_VC_FONT used to be 'latarcyrheb-sun16', which does support Arabic, Cyrillic and Hebrew characters, but doesn't support Greek or many Latin 'special characters' used for western European languages. The change was made back in F22:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/NewDefaultConsoleFont

but note that Change page claims "Arabic/Cyrillic/Hebrew are not supported at all by eurlatgr so those users should still stay with latarcyrheb-sun16", which clearly wasn't actually implemented: we just gave everyone eurlatgr.

Obviously what we ought to be doing is picking latarcyrheb-sun16 when appropriate (and maybe another layout for other languages? Not sure if there are any with significant translations that aren't covered by one or the other; possibly CJK and Indic, though I don't know if there are good console fonts for either of those. Doing Chinese in a console font is obviously unrealistic...)

We actually already have a bunch of code for this: see `get_locale_console_fonts` in pyanaconda/localization.py (and what it's used for). This exists as a consequence of https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1182562 , where we noticed that an appropriate font is not used during text installation; now we have that code to discover an appropriate console font and load it during text installation. But we never thought to apply the same logic to the console font configured for use *after* the installation.

Comment 1 Fedora End Of Life 2017-02-28 10:48:08 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 26 development cycle.
Changing version to '26'.

Comment 2 Fedora End Of Life 2018-05-03 08:46:21 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 26 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 26. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a Fedora  'version'
of '26'.

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Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2018-05-29 11:22:07 UTC
Fedora 26 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2018-05-29. Fedora 26
is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any
further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

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