Tiny font on 4.0.0 release

[sonjoonho]

On the latest Snap release, all the emojis look tiny. I think this is because the FONTCONFIG workaround was remove in https://github.com/tom-james-watson/Emote/pull/96/files#diff-9636b5b799374fc956ab1e6d462a5051b62fd7404bb45aa6e63580d0e005f73fR13-R16. Restoring these lines appears to fix the issue.

[tom-james-watson]

Putting those lines back in the script reintroduces this issue for me: #96 (comment).

[sonjoonho]

Ha that's fun. Okay, I'll see if there's something else we can do.

[tom-james-watson]

I'll try and check on some other machines today

[tom-james-watson]

What distro are you on? I'm testing on debian 12. I have access to ubuntu 22.04 too.

[tom-james-watson]

Just tested on a Fedora 38 VM and both snap and flatpak versions work fine with no obvious issues. Are you using a Wayland or an X11 session?

[andrewbrey]

I just upgraded from 3.0.3 to 4.0.0 of my snap build and I too have the small font size issue. I'm on PopOS 22.04 with Gnome 42 and X11.

I don't know if this is related, but in case it is, I noticed that in my "about" screen it's indicated that this is a "dev build" which was unexpected given that I installed using snap install emote (and I did not specify any specific "dev" channel).

[tom-james-watson]

The about thing is a separate bug (#111).

Do you see the tiny fonts if you try the flatpak version, if you're willing to test that out?

[andrewbrey]

The about thing is a separate bug (#111).

Gotcha - thanks!

Do you see the tiny fonts if you try the flatpak version, if you're willing to test that out?

I just tried the flatpak version and it installs fine, but for me I can't actually get the window to show up, and checking journalctl I see the following output:

Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]: Traceback (most recent call last):
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/snap/emote/20/lib/python3.10/site-packages/emote/__init__.py", line 88, in handle_accelerator
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/snap/emote/20/lib/python3.10/site-packages/emote/__init__.py", line 103, in create_picker_window
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/snap/emote/20/lib/python3.10/site-packages/emote/picker.py", line 54, in __init__
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/snap/emote/20/lib/python3.10/site-packages/emote/picker.py", line 85, in init_header
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/snap/emote/20/lib/python3.10/site-packages/emote/picker.py", line 143, in init_skintone_button
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/snap/emote/20/lib/python3.10/site-packages/emote/user_data.py", line 130, in load_skintone_index
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/shelve.py", line 243, in open
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:     return DbfilenameShelf(filename, flag, protocol, writeback)
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/shelve.py", line 227, in __init__
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:     Shelf.__init__(self, dbm.open(filename, flag), protocol, writeback)
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/dbm/__init__.py", line 95, in open
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]:     return mod.open(file, flag, mode)
Jun 20 10:06:52 poppy emote_emote.desktop[9414]: _dbm.error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/me/snap/emote/20/.local/share/Emote/user_data'

I just noticed that it's loading snap filesystem things from the flatpak launch process - that seems like a red herring maybe?

[tom-james-watson]

Moved flatpak error to #112.

[tom-james-watson]

I have just tested on a separate Ubuntu 22.04 machine and confirm that I do see this with the snap version, but not the flatpak version.

@andrewbrey also says in #112 that the flatpak version doesn't have this issue.

[andrewbrey]

off topic - just as color commentary, this is not the first time I've encountered funny font issues with snaps ( for example beekeeper-studio/beekeeper-studio#695 ) and I've found each time that just switching to another format (flatpak, appimage, etc) just tends to work better with respect to fonts. Bummer that it's a persistent pain point with snap builds of applications 😟

[tom-james-watson]

Can confirm this fix breaks the app both on debian 12 and fedora 38, but fixes Ubuntu 22.04. I wonder if it's specifically a problem with ubuntu derivatives.

[tom-james-watson]

I've just pushed a new snap version that attempts to fix this issue by applying @sonjoonho's font workaround, but only if the system is detected as being a ubuntu-derivative - a6abad4.

This is a pretty shit workaround that will probably break, but as far as I can tell this should fix the issue on the systems we have reports on, without breaking it on the systems we know the fix breaks things on.

Can you please refresh your snap installation and check whether it now displays with normal fonts?

[sonjoonho]

Thanks Tom! I can confirm that this works on my Ubuntu installation. The need for the workaround is pretty annoying, but from a little bit of Googling it looks like fonts are just a bit of a mess with Snaps.

[tom-james-watson]

@SuperSandro2000 - I can't reply inline to the comment you made on a6abad4. Unfortunately /etc/os-release when running inside the snap returns stuff about Ubuntu Core, not the actual system values. You can explore a bit what is possible if you do snap run --shell emote - that drops you into the same environment that script will run in.

[tom-james-watson]

If you can find some way of extending the check to exempt nixos then let me know.

[SuperSandro2000]

I don't have snap on my machine so I can't really test it but it should be possible to just grep case insensitive for ubuntu or something. /etc/lsb-release should exist on many many distros and just relying on that is not a very good idea.

[tom-james-watson]

Looks like this also breaks Ubuntu 23.04. Opening a new issue: #115