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I get this too often: https://robert.penz.name/354/how-to-fix-the-font-for-virt-ma... The gtk program decided on some font, but didn't have the audacity to request it as a dependency, so you end up with a GUI that prints crap for all text instead. The problem is "easy" to figure out, the workaround is "easy" and the long term fix is also "easy" but for some reason, it still happens. Now if it would just fall back to whatever default X font there was, I would see text on all strings even with bad size/kerning/look but nopes. Blank squares is where we are at.

So when someone makes a program that just decides to print "Hello" by just printing out those chars on my computer, with my font (or the default, the system, the fallback) it is kind of nice that I at least can see what it tries to tell me.



Ok, interesting counter argument. I guess it's “the package's fault”, but you are right that this arises from a potentially unnecessary layer.




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