Wrong size of the Fira Code glyphs

[mateusz-bajorek]

🗹 Requirements

• I have searched the issues for my issue and found nothing related and/or helpful
• I have searched the FAQ for help
• I have searched the Wiki for help

🎯 Subject of the issue

Experienced behaviour:

After upgrading from 2.1.0 to 2.2.1, the size of the glyphs in Windows Terminal is wrong (smaller) when using FiraCode font.

Expected behaviour:

The size of the glyphs is correct.

🔧 Your Setup

• Fira Code Regular Nerd Font Complete Windows Compatible.ttf
  • either downloaded from the releases page or installed through scoop.sh
• Windows Terminal
• Windows 11

★ Screenshots (Optional)

Size of the glyphs when using release 2.1.0:

Size of the glyphs when using release 2.2.1:

Windows Terminal settings dialog:

[Finii]

Can reproduce

• Installed just the one font file.
• Gitlab glyph F296
• Font looks good in fontforge ('gitlab' is 1951 wide, normal letter is 1200)
• Windows Terminal says glyph width is ambiguous https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/deffbbc7f52a3e41aaf760977a907d326382848b/src/types/CodepointWidthDetector.cpp#L246
• Windows Terminal thinks the glyph needs to be small (i.e. 1 cell wide) and scales down accordingly

means

• This seems to be an instance of (would be fixed by) font-patcher: Make Nerd Fonts Monospaced Again #764
• On the other hand there are several issues open at Windows Terminal
• Note DHowett's comment Some of the extended Unicode characters are rendered with incorrect size and placement microsoft/terminal#6738 (comment)

[Finii]

While this is confirmed, it is still open what one would expect.

There are people that want the fonts to be 'correct'.
'Correct' fonts are considered incorrect by Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal would reject the font anyhow, you need to check 'all fonts' so that you could take it.

This is kind of a political question. So there is no simple answer to it.

I leave this open, but the behaviour is 'as expected', the bad this is.

[Finii]

Further explanation

We have 'normal' glyphs like letters or so, that have all the same width.
Then we have symbols like 'gitlab'.

We can combine them in three ways

1. letters and symbols have the same width (true monospaced) (symbols feel 'small')
2. symbols are wider -> NOT monospaced anymore obviously
3. symbols pretend to be same width but 'secretly' protude out of the 'cell'

The first variant is Nerd Font Mono, and unchanged.
The Nerd Font non-Mono has been 3 for v2.1.0 and is now 2

The reason to switch to solution 2 is for all the people that use the font in applications and stuff (not in terminals).
For terminal users I guess solution 3 would be better.
But, well, ... most terminals except Windows Terminal handle 2 and 3 equally good.
You can read Howett's strong opinion on that in the comment linked above.

Another way would be for Nerd Fonts to supply not only two but three variants of each font.
But well, ... we should at least drop the Windows Compat versions then, which is of questionable usefullness anyhow.
You see, not so easy.

Edit: A much deeper explanation is in #764 (and maybe #731, further down), please consider reading that also.

Any comments welcome.

[Finii]

Duplicate of #731, still current with v2.2.1.

[saumyajyoti]

symbols pretend to be same width but 'secretly' protude out of the 'cell'

Is there a way we can generate this now with latest Source? Want to try locally.

[Finii]

No, unfortunately. I started #900 to re-investigate and come up with a solution.

I just noticed that also fontforge's behavior changed, so patching with the v2.1.0 script yields other results now then before *sigh*.

But I guess this week.

[saumyajyoti]

I reverted change 59c45ba and ran locally. I am able to get IOSEVKA 16.0.2 working as intended.

Font Settings Win11

Terminal Win11

[Finii]

Which fontforge version did you use? I noticed that with HEAD the behavior changed when removing the bearings.

What I mean: When patching with the commit reverted (as you did) I get center aligned glyphs (left and right bearings equal) instead of left aligned glyphs (left bearing = 0). Hmm. Maybe a mistake.

Edit: Add second paragraph

[saumyajyoti]

I used Version: 20220308.
Not sure how to confirm the left bearing value.
I use commandline: ffpython font-patcher -c -w -l --careful

[Finii]

What is ffpyhon 😬

confirm the left bearing value

Just open the font with fontforge.
Left bearing is zero (all 'overhang' is on the right) (image taken from #764)

What I got yesterday:

(different symbol, because I did not do --complete but just the basic stuff)

But your glyphs seems to line up nicely left aligned:

[saumyajyoti]

Thanks. ffpython is python exe packaged in font-forge release. As the font patcher is w/o extension, windows does not run python by default, so running with python bundled with font-forge.

[Finii]

@saumyajyoti You are right! Thanks! I do not know what went wrong when I tested it, but I did a fresh (manual) revert and it works.

Now exploring how to solve the Arch issue that the commit should have addressed in a different way.

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