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by ralonso 3755 days ago
What advantage does this solution have over having a custom font configuration on Linux with fallback support for a font with unique unicode glyph support? In my case, I have Google's Noto font as my main font and have Font Awesome and Emoji One as my fallback fonts and it seems to cover everything.

What exactly do these patched fonts do or add?
2 comments
SilverSurfer972 3754 days ago
I totally agree that fallback is the way to go. Unfortunately I couldn't get powerline glyphs to work on my archlinux box, lost patience and just grabbed the droid patched fonts. I would say that it adds portability, consistency and makes it easier to have glyphs working straight.
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RubyPinch 3755 days ago
they work in more places

e.g. other operating systems

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ralonso 3755 days ago
I'm genuinely curious, do you have any idea how other OSs handle fonts? Does OSX have something similar to Linux's X11's font configuration? What about Windows?
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RubyPinch 3755 days ago
if I'm not mistaken, windows can handle fallback fonts, but it requires a fair bit of manual working to do

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd3...

so in most cases, it is unsupported, and in situations where it is supported, it is usually not exposed as an option

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