I succeeded with the process of converting a bitmap font into a vector format with embedded bitmaps, which Pango will display. It took me hours to figure out, so for anyone else:
Use fontforge, as described here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/issues/386#note_570411 The gotcha is that once you've installed the resulting font, then it displays invisibly in font selection dialogs. However, don't give up there! If you click around blindly to select the font you want, then the font displays correctly in gnome-terminal, including all size variations, with bold and italic variants. There is some residual weirdness in that selecting a font size that is not defined in the bitmap (e.g. when using 'ctrl-+'), the terminal goes completely blank instead of falling back to another font. For me, using fonttosfnt, as also described in that thread, had many serious issues (eg the resulting font only preserved the bitmap's smallest size variant) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to pango1.0 in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1861340 Title: All bitmap fonts no longer visible after upgrade 19.10 -> Focal (development) Status in Pango: Fix Released Status in pango1.0 package in Ubuntu: Triaged Bug description: For years I've installed a bitmap font for my terminals, but since I upgraded to Focal (development branch) today, it (and other bitmap fonts) no longer work. The font is 'Dina', from here: http://www.dcmembers.com/jibsen/download/61/?unapproved=504&moderation-hash=f1abb9d89caafa881dcfc05cd32372e7 I have always installed it using a script: # install dina sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/Dina cd /usr/share/fonts/Dina sudo unzip ~/Downloads/Dina.zip # enable bitmap fonts sudo rm -f /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf # rebuild the cache fc-cache -f -v # Set as default mono font gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name "Dina 8" This has always worked in the past, through many versions of Ubuntu, including 19.10. I installed Focal today, using `sudo do-release-upgrade -d`. Now the above script does not make Dina visible in font selectors such as that produced by the Tweaks / Fonts / [Monospace Text] button. Terminals that were previously configured to use that font now display the "box of hex digits" characters (what are they called?) gnome-font-viewer does not list any of the installed bitmap fonts. While trying to find a fix, I tried a few changes to the above script, which did not help: * Unzip to "$HOME/.fonts" instead * Trying other symlinks in the fonts config.d: ( cd /etc/fonts/conf.d sudo rm -f 70-no-bitmaps.conf sudo ln -sf ../conf.avail/70-yes-bitmaps.conf ) (tried with both 'yes-bitmaps' and 'force-bitmaps') * fc-cache -r # "really" force cache re-creation To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/pango/+bug/1861340/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp