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+title = "Fixing bitmap font fallbacks in the st terminal"
+date = 2023-11-24
+draft = false
++++
+tldr, change FC_SCALABLE in x.c from 1 to 0. (comes from the font2 patch)
+
+For some context, I have been using xterm for a long while when I'm on OpenBSD
+since it is included by default in Xenocara with Terminus as my default font,
+and the main reason why I did not use st again was that my bitmap fallback font
+for CJK was not loading. Instead, I get an ugly sans-serif scaled font that
+looked very out of place in my otherwise clean and crisp bitmap terminal.
+
+Yes, I did make sure that the font2 patch for st was applied correctly.
+
+The X11 font string for reference is Fixed:
+-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-ja-18-120-100-100-c-180-iso10646-1
+
+It also didn't help that fontconfig was unable to find the font either no
+matter how much I looked for it with fc-list and fc-match. The weirder thing is
+that when I installed GNU Unifont to my fonts directory, fontconfig was able to
+find it and st loaded it (I put a printf in the xloadfonts() function in x.c),
+but the same old ugly scaled font was still being shown for CJK. The weirderer
+thing was that Unifont was rendering just fine when being used as the main font
+instead of in font2.
+
+I thought to myself why this was happening and wasn't able to find out, until I
+reread the font loading portion in x.c's xloadsparefonts() function that came
+part of the font2 patch.
+
+It had set the FC_SCALABLE boolean to 1 (true). That explained why the fallback
+font rendered fine as the main font and not fallback. Setting that boolean to
+0 (false) fixed my fallback font not matching issue, and now I have clean and
+crisp looking text that I can read more easily.
+
+I already disliked fontconfig, freetype, xft, and friends (don't get me started
+on pango and harfbuzz), but this incident made me dislike it further.