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[goyalyashpal]

Checklist

• I've looked through the troubleshooting docs, the known problems list, and existing open issues for similar issues.

Environment:

• operating system and version: NixOS v24.11 + Cinnamon v6.2.9
• architecture: x86_64/AMD64
• terminal(s) running bottom with the problem: GNOME Terminal v3.54.2 using VTE v0.78.2 (system default)
• (Optional) filesystem(s): ext4, ntfs
• bottom: 0.10.2
• install bottom: via nix-pkgs (official) under v24.11 stable channel
  Adding pkgs.bottom in users.users."<username>".packages in effectively /etc/nixos/configuration.nix file

• fonts: vanilla distributed with OS

  

older:

• os (distro): linux nixos unstable, at commit: https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs/tree/99dc8785f6a0adac95f5e2ab05cc2e1bf666d172
• bottom: judging by bottom package at above commit, it seems that it too was 0.10.2 same as on current unstable
• fonts: i dont know how to find, which fonts to tell here, but i can try to look into if guided

Describe the issue

• btm used to show beautiful plots with small/dense dot markers.
• Now it shows either bad full braille, or ugly coarse/sparse dot markers.

What is the expected behaviour?

• This is what it looked like [GOOD]:
  this is not same as the --dot_marker flag which is even more ugly than braille.

  

What is the actual behaviour?

• This is what it looks like now with braille [BAD] :

  

• and then with --dot_marker [UGLY]:

  

How can we reproduce this?

No response

Additional information

this is what it looks like for me
@ ClementTsang at #1354 (comment)

hi! yes, something like that is what i also want the line plot in bottom to look like.
and that's what it did as well out of the box several months ago - i had not configured anything specific to btm at all.

but last month, i installed my system afresh last month, and now btm uses these ugly braille.

Originally posted by @goyalyashpal in #1354

[ClementTsang]

Next time, please follow the issue templates.

That aside, could you try following https://clementtsang.github.io/bottom/nightly/troubleshooting/#braille-font-issues-on-linuxmacosunix-like? In particular, this thread has a lot of details about a similar issue: cjbassi/gotop#18

If that doesn't help, please provide info about what terminal emulator you are using (e.g. Konsole, kitty, urxvt, etc.) so I can try to provide you with help.

[goyalyashpal]

please follow the issue templates.

done... the "reference comment in new issue" button in github should really show the reminder to use the template.

on clicking that, it creates the comment as new issue, and does show no mention of template anywhere.

[ClementTsang]

This is also not an issue nor a feature request, so I will convert this to a discussion.

[ClementTsang]

One common solution is to see if you have gnu-free-fonts installed - if you do, you may want to try and uninstall it and see if that helps.

[goyalyashpal]

see if you have gnu-free-fonts installed

do you mean these ones: freefont ?

it looks like these are installed, but i don't know if nixos would even allow uninstalling it, i will look into it someday later.

• searching for free in xed font picker

  

• searching for gnu in xed font picker: "No Fonts Found"

[ClementTsang]

Hmmm. Unfortunately I don't use nixOS or cinnamon, nor do I know how to configure its packages, so the best I can do is offer generic advice. The good thing I guess is that there are other people with similar font issues with similar tools, like here.

You may have better luck reaching out in NixOS or Cinnamon forums for more specific advice as this is really just an issue around fonts - if you do get it fixed let me know though, I would be happy to help update my documentation for people in the future.

[goyalyashpal]

there are other people with similar font issues with similar tools, like here.

yes, that is exactly the thing i wanted to say that: in the braille character, even the empty dots are rendered too [bad].
thanks a lot for sharing.

fc-list :charset=2802
FC_DEBUG=4 pango-view --font="monospace" -t "⠂" | grep family:

It's resolved from DejaVuSans for me (and looks as you desire)
- @ seth at https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2093005#p2093005

i am sharing the output of the fc-list (fontconfig list) command below just for the records.

Output of fc-list :charset=2802

$ fc-list :charset=2802 | sed -e 's_^/nix/store/.\{32\}-__g' -e 's_/.*__g' | sort --unique
dejavu-fonts-2.37
dejavu-fonts-minimal-2.37
font-misc-misc-1.1.3
freefont-ttf-20120503
unifont-16.0.02

$ fc-list :charset=2802 | sed --expression 's_^/nix/store/.\{32\}-__g'
unifont-16.0.02/share/fonts/unifont.otb: Unifont:style=Sans-Serif
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSerifCondensed-BoldItalic.ttf: DejaVu Serif,DejaVu Serif Condensed:style=Condensed Bold Italic,Bold Italic
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSerifCondensed-Bold.ttf: DejaVu Serif,DejaVu Serif Condensed:style=Condensed Bold,Bold
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/9x18.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf: DejaVu Sans:style=Oblique
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf: DejaVu Serif:style=Bold
dejavu-fonts-minimal-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSans.ttf: DejaVu Sans:style=Book
unifont-16.0.02/share/fonts/unifont.bdf: Unifont:style=Sans-Serif
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/9x15.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/18x18ko.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=ko
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSansCondensed.ttf: DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed,Book
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/5x8.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/6x13.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=SemiCondensed
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf: DejaVu Sans:style=Bold Oblique
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSansCondensed-Oblique.ttf: DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed Oblique,Oblique
unifont-16.0.02/share/fonts/unifont.pcf.gz: Unifont:style=Sans-Serif
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/18x18ja.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=ja
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/7x14.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSansCondensed-BoldOblique.ttf: DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed Bold Oblique,Bold Oblique
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSerifCondensed-Italic.ttf: DejaVu Serif,DejaVu Serif Condensed:style=Condensed Italic,Italic
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/5x7.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/10x20.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf: DejaVu Sans:style=Bold
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSerifCondensed.ttf: DejaVu Serif,DejaVu Serif Condensed:style=Condensed,Book
unifont-16.0.02/share/fonts/opentype/unifont.otf: Unifont:style=Regular
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSansCondensed-Bold.ttf: DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed Bold,Bold
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSerif-Italic.ttf: DejaVu Serif:style=Italic
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSerif.ttf: DejaVu Serif:style=Book
freefont-ttf-20120503/share/fonts/truetype/FreeMono.ttf: FreeMono:style=Regular,нормален,normal,obyčejné,Standard,µεσαία,Normaali,Normál,Normale,Standaard,Normalny,Обычный,Normálne,menengah,прямій,navadno,vidējs,normalusis,thường,Arrunta,सामान्य
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/6x9.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/8x13.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSerif-BoldItalic.ttf: DejaVu Serif:style=Bold Italic
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/7x13.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/6x10.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=Regular
font-misc-misc-1.1.3/lib/X11/fonts/misc/6x12.pcf.gz: Fixed:style=SemiCondensed
dejavu-fonts-2.37/share/fonts/truetype/DejaVuSans.ttf: DejaVu Sans:style=Book

[goyalyashpal]

Better diagnostics

a much better way to find the above info is to use the fontfor package (link to repo)
rather than doing the parsing gymnastics with fc-list

• $ nix-shell --packages fontfor --run 'fontfor -p u+2802'
  Font(s) support the character "⠂"(U+2802, 10242, 0xE2 0xA0 0x82):
  DejaVu Sans  with 17 styles
  DejaVu Serif with 16 styles
  FreeMono     with 1 style
  Unifont      with 1 style
  ----------------------------------------
  Please visit http://127.0.0.1:42899/ in your browser for preview
  And press Enter after your finish...
  

• here, freefont and unifont renders empty dots too, thus reproducing the faulty behaviour.
  1st image: lol, diagnosing braille, using braille

  

• the reason seems to be that freemono is the only "mono" font providing glyph for this.
  live example here in the browser shown below.

• see that for rendering the braille dot: " ⠂ " vs "⠂".
  correct glyph is picked in normal formatting,
  but same bad glyph in mono formatting.

  

Prospective fix on nixos

try adding nerd-fonts.symbols-only to fonts.packages.

• however, taking lesson from last try, i am afraid maybe this will replace all the currently existing fonts on the system?

• so, if things went wrong, then try enabling fonts.enableDefaultPackages too,
  which will add these following fonts to the system:

   with pkgs; [
     dejavu_fonts
     freefont_ttf
     gyre-fonts
     liberation_ttf
     unifont
     noto-fonts-color-emoji
   ]

• in any case, the following is list of currently installed fonts obtained with fc-list : family
  (cross checked & manually diff-ed with listing in xed GUI text editor's preference panel):

   - cursor.pcf
     DejaVu {Math,Sans,Serif}
   - Fixed
     {Free,Liberation }{Mono,Sans,Serif}
     Noto-Color-Emoji
   + Monospace
   + Sans,Serif,System-ui
     Tex-Gyre {A..T}
     Ubuntu {Thin,Light,Cn,Mono}
     Ubuntu {Regular,Medium,...}
     Unifont

i will [try to] experiment with this course of action & share any updates in some days.

[ClementTsang]

Thanks for reporting back! Would definitely appreciate it if you share updates, I can add some of this to the troubleshooting documentation (or if you want feel free to send a PR for it)!

[goyalyashpal]

hi! it seems that symbols-only font doesn't support this glyph either. do you know of a monospace font which supports this glyph?

----
p.s.

surprising to me is the fact that how does vscodium, and only vscodium (so far) renders this with correct minimal glyph even in monospace. why? why not others? it seems a mystery.

related fact also that DejaVu Sans does have this glyph, but DejaVu Sans Mono doesn't. it indicates that is probably meant to be resolved at system/app level with fallbacks, which might also be how vscodium is doing it.

if above endeavour of finding some mono font fails, and this line of reasoning seems correct, then i'd have to find some nixos option to alter the order of fallbacks for this range of glyphs. i remember doing this somewhere before, probably on windows 10 with scoop. but don't remember much, could've been in the initial try with nixos too.

alternate can be to patch some existing mono font with font containing this glyph, but that seems gory; and i think i won't be ready for investigating that atm.

[ClementTsang]

Symbola has support for this (I use kitty to replace specifically braille characters with it), as do many nerd fonts.

[goyalyashpal]

i remember doing this somewhere before, probably on windows 10 with scoop. but don't remember much, could've been in the initial try with nixos too.
- @ me #1694 (reply in thread)

i was correct 😄

• it was with wezterm / mintty terminal with per terminal (dedicated) setting on windows 10.
  see here: icons shown as tofu in mintty mintty/mintty#1260 (comment)

• the current situation in essence / goal is not very different either,
  just that it's gnome-terminal with system level configuration on linux+nixos.

[goyalyashpal]

Would definitely appreciate it if you share updates, I can add some of this to the troubleshooting documentation (or if you want feel free to send a PR for it)!
- @ ClementTsang at #1694 (reply in thread)

hi!

i have finally figured out a pretty non-invasive way to fix picking up of these glyphs from correct mono font with SIL licence. and verified reproducably the minimal way to confirm (& see them take effect) that correct changes have been made to the system, it took a dozen of trials lol.

where in the source (i.e. which file / section etc) would you like this to go? i will open the pr in 2-3 weeks.

thanks for the patience 😃

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