Is it worth raising this point on a pango mailing list and see if what their take is?
Robby On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Matthew Flatt <mfl...@cs.utah.edu> wrote: > Robby's answer is in principle right: `racket/draw' really wants to > work with Unicode characters, and the right way to access dingbat-like > glyphs is to use the corresponding Unicode code point. The > `racket/draw' library mostly inherits this policy from Pango. > > Under Windows, Pango ignores "Wingdings" because it's a non-Unicode > symbol font. The same thing happens with "EZ Special-I" from > "ByzMusicFonts". We may want to change Pango's behavior in the copy > that is distributed with Racket; more on that below. > > On a normal Ubuntu installation, I believe the "Dingbats" font is set > up for Unicode-style use, and that's why "012abc" renders as "012abc". > The glyphs probably are not taken from the "Dingbats" font but found > through fallbacks in another font. If you want a snowflake, use > "\u2744", and that should work everywhere. Of course, you don't > actually want a snowflake, so that's not the end of the story. > > > When I install "EZ Special-I" in Ubuntu, then... well, Racket crashes > due to problems with missing glyphs. But with the repair that I just > pushed to the Racket source repo, the text renders in the way you > expect. The Pango behavior on Ubuntu seems to be to allow the font use, > even though the font claims to be a symbol font --- perhaps on the > assumption that fonts will be well behaved from the Unicode perspective > (in contrast to Windows, where non-well-behaved fonts are available by > default). > > > I think we should probably patch Racket's version of Pango for Windows > to allow the use of symbol fonts. A danger of this hack is that a > symbol font might be used as a fallback for a normal glyph when the > glyph isn't found in some other font. I think that danger is low, > though, and the consequences of failure seem relatively minor (i.e., > just pick a different main font). Furthermore, my Win7 installation > seems to have fonts that act like symbol fonts but apparently don't > claim to be, which defeats Pango's existing check. > > Unfortunately, patching Pango means compiling it myself for Windows, > which is a tedious task that I had so far avoided. Maybe it's > unavoidable, though. > > > At Fri, 23 Nov 2012 15:55:43 -0500, Clement Erik Ferguson wrote: >> I'm sorry, I don't think I've explained the problem I'm having clearly. >> >> I have fonts that I'm using that map latin characters to neumes for >> byzantine chant music. So pressing "1" gives me a particular musical >> symbol, and "a" gives me another symbol. I am trying to use text/font to >> render those symbols, so I call it with a "1" but I'm getting a "1" instead >> of the musical symbol on certain platforms. This method works fine on >> Ubuntu 12.04 32bit and a Debian system that another user tested it on (I'm >> not sure of the version info), but it isn't working on Windows XP and on >> Ubuntu 12.10 64bit. >> >> If you go to https://github.com/muraiki/byzscribe and scroll down to the >> picture, you can see what the output should look like. On platforms where >> it doesn't work, instead of getting the musical symbols I simply get the >> textual string that should map to those symbols, such as 01a. >> >> You can download the font package, which includes a PDF with a character >> table, from here: >> http://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/music/ByzMusicFonts.zipThe >> character table is EZ-CharacterTables.pdf >> >> The other symbol fonts that I've tried work in the same way, although >> instead of musical symbols they have other things like snowflakes and >> shapes. Those aren't the fonts that I need to use, but I wanted to make >> sure that the problem didn't lie in the byzantine chant fonts. On platforms >> where the byzantine chant fonts don't work as expected, no other symbol >> fonts work, either. >> >> I'm sorry if this is a bit confusing. Thank you for your help! >> >> >> On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Robby Findler >> <ro...@eecs.northwestern.edu>wrote: >> >> > If you want to use, say, α, then you need an actual α in the string, not >> > an "a". >> > >> > I don't know how the dingbats work, but certainly that's how it works >> > for characters that are in the unicode character set. >> > >> > (You can type those characters by using their LaTeX equivalents and >> > then hitting control-\ or alt-\ (depending on the platform).) >> > >> > Robby >> > >> > On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Clement Erik Ferguson >> > <clementraph...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > > Now I'm experiencing the same problem in Ubuntu 12.10. No symbol fonts >> > > render when using text/font; I only get the latin text equivalent. I >> > tried >> > > this using the Dingbats font built into Ubuntu along with custom symbol >> > > fonts I had downloaded. Both Dingbats and the other symbol fonts I >> > > downloaded work fine in other programs. >> > > >> > > The system where this did work correctly was an Ubuntu 12.04 machine >> > > (running under a VM). The Ubuntu 12.10 machine I'm using now is a fresh >> > OS >> > > installation using the 64-bit binary downloaded from the Racket site. >> > > >> > > Is anyone else using Ubuntu 12.10? Can you try running the following >> > code? >> > > >> > > (require 2htdp/image) >> > > (text/font "test" FONT-SIZE "black" "Dingbats" 'symbol 'normal 'normal >> > #f) >> > > >> > > This should render some triangles and a snowflake, not "test". >> > > >> > > Thanks! >> > > >> > > >> > > On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Robby Findler < >> > ro...@eecs.northwestern.edu> >> > > wrote: >> > >> >> > >> The text/font function ultimately just calls find-or-create-font with >> > >> the font details and then draw-string on the dc<%> with the string, so >> > >> I guess that this is either a problem at that level of the Racket GUI >> > >> system, or something that is just different about how Windows works >> > >> from other platforms. (Sorry I don't know the right answer here.) >> > >> >> > >> Robby >> > >> >> > >> On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Clement Erik Ferguson >> > >> <clementraph...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > Hi all, >> > >> > >> > >> > I'm a newcomer to Racket and I ran into a problem with the text/font >> > >> > function in 2htdp/image. stamourv on #racket helped me diagnose this, >> > >> > and it >> > >> > seems to be a problem confined to Windows XP. When using text/font >> > with >> > >> > a >> > >> > symbol font like Wingdings or Symbol (standard symbol fonts included >> > >> > with >> > >> > Windows) the character is not rendered. Instead, I get whatever the >> > >> > equivalent Roman character would be. >> > >> > >> > >> > For instance: >> > >> > >> > >> > (define testingfont >> > >> > (text/font "012abc" 36 "black" >> > >> > "Wingdings" 'default 'normal 'normal #f)) >> > >> > >> > >> > If I then type testingfont into the interactions window, instead of >> > >> > rendering a series of symbols I get the input string 012abc instead. I >> > >> > also >> > >> > tried using 'symbol instead of 'default. We tried the same code on >> > >> > Debian >> > >> > (stamourv) and Ubuntu (me) and it worked fine on those platforms. >> > >> > >> > >> > I'm running Windows XP 32-bit, and I am using Racket 5.3.1. >> > >> > >> > >> > Thanks! >> > >> > >> > >> > ____________________ >> > >> > Racket Users list: >> > >> > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users >> > >> > >> > > >> > > >> > >> ____________________ >> Racket Users list: >> http://lists.racket-lang.org/users ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
