[Nix-dev] Using fonts with X terribly broken?

[Kirill Elagin]

Hi,

I've just tried to run `dmenu` in NixOS and I've got issues with unicode
symbols.
So, it turns out, `dmenu` wants the chosen font to be properly registered
within X server.

I've glanced through all the fonts stuff in NixOS modules and it looks like
there is
something wrong. That is, there are, basically, to different sets of fonts:
ordinary fonts
and X fonts. If you add and ordinary font to `config.fonts.fonts` it won't
be added to
the X config, because, most likely, it won't have a `fonts.dir` file.
Basically, this means
that almost no modern beautiful font can be registered within X server.

It makes perfect sense to create a `fonts.dir` file, if it doesn't exist
yet, using `mkfontdir`
as a part of font installation. This way any font will be available for X
server.

Running `mkfontdir` won't add any noticeable overhead even for headless
systems,
since `mkfontdir` doesn't have any dependencies. But if that's an issue, we
can add
a parameter to font derivations, but, in my opinion, that adds extra
unnecessary complexity.

So, any ideas, how to do this properly?


--
Кирилл Елагин
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