View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | View Status | Date Submitted | Last Update |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0017867 | Scribus | Typography | public | 2026-07-01 15:30 | 2026-07-02 12:15 |
| Reporter | qirat | Assigned To | |||
| Priority | normal | Severity | feature | Reproducibility | N/A |
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Platform | Linux | OS | Fedora Workstation | OS Version | 44 |
| Product Version | 1.7.4.svn | ||||
| Summary | 0017867: [Feature Request] Script-specific font preferences to prevent missing glyphs in mixed-script text | ||||
| Description | Add an option to assign default fonts for specific scripts (e.g., Latin, Devanagari, CJK) individually. When pasting mixed-script text, the app should automatically render each character using the user-defined font for that script. This will help to display complex characters correctly (especially for mixed-script text) and eliminates "missing glyph" boxes without requiring manual font changes. | ||||
| Steps To Reproduce | Maybe two font preferences categories as per script like in LibreOffice (Edit Para Style > Font): Western, Complex/Asian | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Patch | No | ||||
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I'm not sure that the suggested behavior is a good one for Scribus. I think that the starting point should be: what is the correct behavior when pasting text into Scribus? The case of the scripts that are only correctly rendered in fewer fonts should be compatible with the general behavior. First, one should take into consideration the characteristics of the source text formatting: - Pasting pure text with no formatting - Pasting text with direct formatting (but no style information) - Pasting text with named styles (and possibly also direct formatting on top of it). (I guess that, for the specific case, we also need to find out if the snipped being pasted contains information about the language and/or script of the text) (Probably, the user should also have a way to decide how to pick one of the mode, and overrule the automatic detection. If possible, without being presented a pop up on each paste.) On the other side, we have the state of the text frame where the paste action occurs: - Does the user want to use the styles that have already been applied to the frame (or to the cursor position in the frame) - Does the user want to use the direct formatting at the cursor position (included the font currently active?) - Does the user want some style replacement to happen? Should only part of the direct formatting be taken into account? (As an example, copying into a frame with the correct language some text from a web page that does not have the language correctly set should retain the frame's language.) All this being taken into account, I guess that Scribus should get a switch (per document and/or global) to enable the advanced "international" features. (Because the "western" are lazy and most of them will never be faced with the need to choose the binding direction or having to define different fonts per script...). And then, the style definition should have the option to define different character styles (font, size...) for each script. Also, I'm not sure if looking at the language (as defined in Scribus) is enough to detect the script to be used: we might need to extend that too... As a person who has never written anything in any non Latin script languages (except having fun with Egyptian hieroglyphs in secondary school...), I will need somebody (like you qirat) who checks, if what I'm writing makes sense : - ) |
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Thanks, this makes sense. Just to clarify: I did not mean this as paste behaviour only. I used pasting mixed-script text only as an example which I now think was a poor one given the scope of the feature I am talking about. So, one can already define a character style for a specific script, but that still needs manual application to each instance. What I wanted to suggest is an option inside Paragraph Styles for script-based fallback fonts. Maybe it does not need many fallback slots. In most cases, the text will use two scripts at max (Latin plus one other script). So it could go something like: * Main script font: Source Serif * Second script fallback font: Gurmukhi — Noto Serif Gurmukhi Then, if a paragraph contains English + Punjabi, Scribus would automatically use the main font for Latin and the fallback font for Gurmukhi _inside the same paragraph_. For users working with more scripts, character styles can still be used manually for the less common cases in the text. |
