[2 new] Expansion: add U+2103 DEGREE CELSIUS and U+2109 DEGREE FAHRENHEIT

Bug #1811538 reported by Chris Billington
12
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
fonts-ubuntu (Ubuntu)
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Ubuntu lacks the two characters U+2103 DEGREE CELSIUS and U+2109 DEGREE FAHRENHEIT.

Bugs #1319543 and #736613 are about Ubuntu mono lacking these characters, but the non-mono font lacks them too.

This is not often obvious, as on Ubuntu a fallback font is used. However it's not ideal since the C/F is obviously not in the Ubuntu typeface and the degrees symbol not the same size as in the Ubuntu font.

Presumably in order to be compatible with mono fonts where the degree symbol would otherwise take up too much space, some apps are using these characters instead of the separate degrees and F/C characters. For example, gnome-weather, the weather-in-clock gnome-shell extension, and the weather in the dropdown calendar in gnome-shell all use it (see attached screenshot). When I first set up my computer I had box characters instead in these places, because I only had set up Ubuntu fonts and did not have any fallback fonts with these characters. Now that I've installed more fonts it is better, but obviously not ideal.

I imagine it ought to be easier to fix this issue in the regular font than in the monospaced font, since fixed-width is not a requirement and so one can presumably just have it render the same as if the degrees and C/F characters were typed separately.

Revision history for this message
Chris Billington (cjbil1) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb) wrote :

Note those characters are not the preferred encoding for these temperature symbols. GNOME Recipes used to use them as well, and I asked its developer to remove them: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/recipes/commit/2eda5945131d1bec59bf0762d13118dab4e39e19

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Chris Billington (cjbil1) wrote :

Ah that's interesting. I found the bug report where gnome-weather changed to use the single-codepoint encoding (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=785274), and this is what made me think it was the preferred encoding. They were concerned about linebreaks between the ° and the C/F, not about looking good in monospaced fonts as I had guessed.

But if these are compatibility characters then I will report the bug against gnome-weather suggesting not to use them.

Will leave this one open though since they're still missing characters.

Revision history for this message
Chris Billington (cjbil1) wrote :

Bug reported against libgweather: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libgweather/issues/8

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in fonts-ubuntu (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
affects: ubuntu-font-family → fonts-ubuntu (Ubuntu)
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