Vanilla Dpup9.3.13 Pros and Cons

[MochiMoppel]

Finally I found a browser that doesn't choke on the github download link.
First impression: Surprisingly "normal" and uneventful installation. Nice and uncluttered desktop (no conky ), no serious bugs and good speed.

Main reason why I wanted to try Vanilla was to find a working Xsane installation (F96-CE-3 wouldn't detect my USB scanner).
Unfortunately Xsane appears to be not installed at all, though the xsaneshell script exists. Will it be included in the ISO some day?

In general the selection of applications is a bit scarce but that's OK. Apart from Xsane there is nothing I miss.

Compared with applications the number of installed fonts is impressive. However all installed fonts - apart from the emoji fonts - cover more or less the same limited range of characters. In other words they are redundant. What they lack is the wide range covered by Puppy's staple font DejaVu Sans. Is there a reason why this font is not installed? So far I've never experienced a Puppy where this font is not present.

The first encounter with the insufficient Unicode support was the "Open File" dialog in Geany. It uses the GTK3 file chooser, and this chooser seems to have a bug. The "Modified" column should display the time for recently saved files in format HH:MM. The separator should be an ASCII colon. However here it uses Unicode U+2236 RATIO , which looks very similar like a colon and it not supported by any of the installed fonts, DejaVu Sans would support it, but my point is that it should really be a colon like in the GTK2 choosers.

weird_time_delimiterORG.png (29.77 KiB) Viewed 1339 times

 
In order to see the differences between the OOTB fonts and when adding DejaVu Sans I used my own Unicode tool. Apparently there are huge gaps in character support. What is also apparent is how problematic the colorful emoji fonts can be when they overlap with the range covered by DejaVu Sans. Sometime the emojis "win", sometimes DejaVu. The user can never be sure what the system will pick. IMHO colored emoji fonts should never be installed by default. If the user loves them he/she can always install them afterwards.

unicode_OOTB_vs_dejavu2.jpg (253.07 KiB) Viewed 1339 times

[dimkr]

9.3.x defaults to Noto instead of DejaVu Sans (which isn't installed), includes CJK fonts and even emojis. It covers more languages and more characters compared to DejaVu, and color emoji support is a must for OK-ish web browsing experience these days.

Only bad things will happen if you force DejaVu as the default, rather than Noto. If you're still sure you want to do this, delete /etc/fonts/conf.d/01-noto.conf.

In general the selection of applications is a bit scarce but that's OK.

Is there any must-have application that you use a lot and should be preinstalled? (Other than xsane)

[geo_c]

However here it uses Unicode U+2236 RATIO , which looks very similar like a colon and it not supported by any of the installed fonts, DejaVu Sans would support it, but my point is that it should really be a colon like in the GTK2 choosers.

In order to see the differences between the OOTB fonts and when adding DejaVu Sans I used my own Unicode tool. Apparently there are huge gaps in character support. What is also apparent is how problematic the colorful emoji fonts can be when they overlap with the range covered by DejaVu Sans. Sometime the emojis "win", sometimes DejaVu. The user can never be sure what the system will pick. IMHO colored emoji fonts should never be installed by default. If the user loves them he/she can always install them afterwards.
unicode_OOTB_vs_dejavu2.jpg

This explains why on one of my pups (or maybe two), geany does not display the "_" underscore character. I don't remember which system it is, so I'll have to boot some up and check. That's problematic in that it doesn't display the underscore in the editor, which makes script editing difficult.

[dimkr]

I don't see this problem, and it's the first time I hear of something like this.

Untitled.png (14.2 KiB) Viewed 1184 times

With remote fonts blocked, forcing Firefox to use the default font (Noto), Dingbats characters render fine:

Untitled.png (80.59 KiB) Viewed 1183 times

Everything works because Noto has these glyphs, so no extra fonts (or remote fonts) are needed:

Untitled.png (111.52 KiB) Viewed 1180 times

And everything "just works" without having to change the default font from DejaVu to Noto, because Noto is the default:

Untitled.png (106.74 KiB) Viewed 1180 times

[MochiMoppel]

9.3.x defaults to Noto instead of DejaVu Sans (which isn't installed), includes CJK fonts and even emojis. It covers more languages and more characters compared to DejaVu

Definitely not in vanilladpup-9.3.13.iso I downloaded and installed! Here Noto Sans covers Latin,Greek,Cyrillic and a few symbols. That's it. Much much less than you claim and show in your screenshot. Are we really talking about the same distro? Did you install extra fonts?

This is what I get with a freshly installed, unmodified vanilladpup-9.3.13, using the installed Firefox as is:

Vanilla_UnicodeDotOrg.png (94.65 KiB) Viewed 1149 times

When a symbol character, e.g. U+2192 (RIGHTWARDS ARROW) is successfully rendered there is a good chance that it is not rendered by Noto but rather by one of the other installed fonts (disregard the IPAG font which I iinstalled because Noto does not include CJK):

Vanilla_U+2192_RIGHTWARDS_ARROW.png (26.86 KiB) Viewed 1149 times

This explains why on one of my pups (or maybe two), geany does not display the "_" underscore character. I

Sounds completely unrelated to me but the problem sounds familiar. In F96-CE Geany doesn't display this character in font size 11, all other sizes are fine, and only when font is DejaVu Sans, all other fonts are fine and only when some configuration were made (don't know which one), in a pristine installation font size 11 is fine. Life is too short to waste time on solving this mystery ...

missing_underline.gif (51.01 KiB) Viewed 1149 times

[dimkr]

This is what I get with a freshly installed, unmodified vanilladpup-9.3.13

How did you install it? Do you have nlsx loaded (that's where the CJK fonts are)?

[d-pupp]

I have done some testing as I was running without nlsx loaded. It does make a big difference!
I tested by going to Unicodeplus main page.
Before I loaded nlsx I was missing many fonts and characters on their main page . Now with nlsx loaded all the fonts on Unicodeplus main page displayed properly.

I can also confirm that Geany was missing an underscore. I no longer have the problem and can not recreated it. I did change the font size to 12 so that it was easier for me to see. I don't know what solved the issue.

[MochiMoppel]

How did you install it?

As I always do: main sfs + <n>drv sfs + initrd.gz + vmlinuz into folder, then booting via grub2dos

Do you have nlsx loaded (that's where the CJK fonts are)?

No. Had no idea what it was. Never expected essential files in there.

This kind of solves the font issue but at the same time creates new ones. I'll explain later if you are still interested but currently I'm a bit busy with other stuff.

BTW: CJK fonts need to be moved from opentype/noto to truetype/noto , otherwise they don't work,

[MochiMoppel]

Is there any must-have application that you use a lot and should be preinstalled? (Other than xsane)

So far:
clipit (or parcellite). A clipboard manager is a must for me.
wmctrl (I know that xdotool is preinstalled but I need both )