SpicesUpdate@claudiux cannot find Symbola font on Gentoo

[Anonymous1157]

Applet version/Build date

7.4.6 (2024-12-30 19:39:35)

Cinnamon version

6.2.9

Distribution

Gentoo

Graphics hardware and driver used

Radeon RX 6750XT and amdgpu 6.6.69

Applet name and maintainer

SpicesUpdate@claudiux @claudiux

What happened?

Hi! I ran into two related issues with this applet concerning the Symbola font requirement. The second is a lot easier to explain but the first is context for it.

---

After installing and enabling SpicesUpdate@claudiux, it opens a terminal and tells me how to install the font with Apt on Ubuntu/Debian. Gentoo uses Portage and the font is not packaged the same way, so these instructions are not useful, and I actually went on a wild goose chase to find this font because the original website does not exist anymore, and it's only in distro package source repositories, and the original package was split into single fonts at some point in history.

Additionally, Gentoo does not ship any of the fonts from ttf-ancient-fonts in the main repository, rather they're available as one ebuild in GURU (which is roughly equivalent to Arch's AUR).

I can't tell if the notification with instructions presented by Spices Update actually gives different instructions per distro or just always presents the Ubuntu/Debian ones, so I'm assuming it would have told a Fedora user how to install with dnf, or an Arch user pacman, et cetera. So, this is how to install the font on Gentoo, written in an idiot-proof way that may be suitable for the notification:

sudo emerge app-eselect/eselect-repository
sudo eselect repository add guru
sudo emerge --sync guru
sudo emerge media-fonts/ttf-ancient-fonts

For the readme:

| Distro | Symbola font | notify-send (*) |
|:---:|:---:|:---:|
|Gentoo|`sudo emerge media-fonts/ttf-ancient-fonts::guru`|`sudo emerge x11-libs/libnotify`|

(It's optional but valid syntax to specify which repository to use as above, and gives a hint to the reader while still being a one-liner.)

---

The ttf-ancient-fonts ebuild installs the font in a location that Spices Update isn't hardcoded (??!?!) to check. The font is in /usr/share/fonts/ttf-ancient-fonts/Symbola_hint.ttf. Symlinking it to ~/.local/share/fonts/Symbola_Hinted.ttf allowed the applet to find the font, but the applet could check one more location.

Other information

No response

[claudiux]

@Anonymous1157
Please try to exec the script: ~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/SpicesUpdate@claudiux/scripts/install_symbola_on_Arch.sh and let me know if it worked.

[Anonymous1157]

It ran but it didn't do anything, because the font was already installed:

$ fc-list Symbola
/usr/share/fonts/ttf-ancient-fonts/Symbola.ttf: Symbola:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/ttf-ancient-fonts/Symbola_hint.ttf: Symbola:style=Regular

This resolves to a non-empty $INSTALLED which skips the rest of the script.

I modified the script to force it to install anyway, and then Spices Update was able to find the user-installed font no problem. But now I technically have the font installed twice:

$ fc-list Symbola
/usr/share/fonts/ttf-ancient-fonts/Symbola.ttf: Symbola:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/ttf-ancient-fonts/Symbola_hint.ttf: Symbola:style=Regular
/home/user/.local/share/fonts/Symbola.otf: Symbola:style=Regular
/home/user/.fonts/Symbola.otf: Symbola:style=Regular

(In my user directories .fonts -> .local/share/fonts.)

[claudiux]

Thanks for the clarification.
I'll try to modify my scripts to take Gentoo into account.

[claudiux]

@Anonymous1157
Please try modifying the scripts as https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon-spices-applets/pull/6741/files
If you have better version of these scripts, please let me know it.