The Broken Bengali Font

[codayon]

Description

Google Noto Fonts and GNU FreeFont handle Bengali differently. On modern systems, Noto looks crisp and correct, whereas GNU FreeFont often fails to render conjuncts properly, making the text look broken or incomplete.

Users on modern GNU/Linux distributions with pre-installed Desktop Environments rarely encounter these issues. However, for those using DIY distributions, this is a significant pain point. Often, the only clear solution is to manually remove the GNU FreeFont package, which is frequently pulled in as a hidden dependency of other applications. I got to know about this on a post someone did on a Facebook group, if I remember correctly it was written by @asifakonjee.

I’ve also noticed a recurring issue with Chromium based browsers and Electron applications (e.g., Brave Browser, Obsidian, Discord, etc) installed through Flatpak. They seem to use GNU FreeFont as the default fallback for Bengali, resulting in broken or incomplete rendering. Even if the system fonts are set correctly, those applications appears to prioritize FreeFont.

Noto Fonts

GNU FreeFont

Related bugs on Savannah #54911 #54997.

[asifakonjee]

Changing fonts to Siyam Rupali as Sans Serif solves the problem in Flatpak Chromium based browsers.

[codayon]

I think Siyam Rupali is still incomplete and needs to be polished. Maybe, I'll give it a try. But I don't have any idea, why don't they just use my system preferences for fonts.

[asifakonjee]

@codayon ... May be due the sandboxing nature of the flatpak apps.