Dealing with awesome-fontconfig codepoints

[bhilburn]

Okay, it looks like we might have a code-point issue with some "awesome" fonts.

While doing some testing recently, I switched over to awesome-fontconfig and the OK_ICON was actually the medium.com logo. I'm not the only person it impacted - as an example, check out this bug report that just got filed, #375, and note that where there should be a checkmark there is actually the medium.com logo.

Per @V1rgul's comment, here, though, on his font the other icons were preferrable:
95f0c3c#commitcomment-20573173

Need to do some digging. I suspect that the solution is going to be that some people need to put manual overrides for certain ICONs in their configs. Not a huge deal, but it is an additional step, so we should try to make it work for as many people as possible out-of-the-box.

It would be great if more people could comment, here, on whether or not the old way or the new way is better for them. Please also describe how you installed your fonts, which font you are using, and which PL9k you are using.

@/all
@V1rgul @dritter @rjorgenson @Tritlo @ryanoasis @lcorsini

[V1rgul]

my configuration came from here: https://github.com/gabrielelana/awesome-terminal-fonts
The fonts were updated 23/07/2016. I updated mine, and the Medium logo was showing before your commits.
We might want to track the awesome-terminal-fonts repository to avoid these problems :)

This file can help seeing all the available icons when cat in the terminal: https://gist.github.com/V1rgul/73810cbf4f8227b37749fb18fa1e9304

I might send a PR to use the correct icons ;)

[bhilburn]

@V1rgul - That would be great, actually, if you could file a PR.

[lcorsini]

Got the same issue using nerd-fonts, since they patch fonts with various sources, codepoints are messed up if I use awesome-fontconfig, so I made a fork in november, I think, which overrides these fonts:

[varunagrawal]

I tried using the master and patched branches of awesome-terminal-fonts, and the former gave me the Medium logo instead of the check mark, whereas the latter gave me a greek symbol where the github octocat should have been.

I picked up the config from the awesome-terminal-fonts repo and the default version as well as setting the family to SourceCodePro has no effect (documentation is vague there though, if we can figure this out, I'd be glad to help write up the docs).

In both cases I had to install the PowerlineSymbols.otf file to get the powerline train arrows showing.

Trying nerd-fonts also didn't seem to help.

[V1rgul]

Did you try #385 ?
It should fix the issues of different versions of awesome-terminal-fonts

[varunagrawal]

@V1rgul I'll try it out. However, doesn't the master plan state that PL9K will go with nerd-fonts? I'd really like to see that happen at the earliest!

[varunagrawal]

@V1rgul I tried out your updated version and I am still getting the issues with the icons when using the patched version of awesome-terminal-fonts. Moreover, I still seem to need PowerlineSymbols.otf (which is Option 2) in order to get the powerline train to render correctly.
This is disconcerting since the installation instructions make it seem that I only require awesome-terminal-fonts to be installed to get everything working.

[V1rgul]

@varunagrawal My pull request only fixes the awesome-fonconfig version
And yes, PowerlineSymbols are needed to have the "arrow" segment separators

[varunagrawal]

@V1rgul sorry about that. Just reconfigured my zshrc and yes everything works as expected! That PR should be merged ASAP. 😄
I can see what you mean when you prefer the larger check mark.

[bhilburn]

Closing this to carry on the conversation elsewhere.