[Fwd: Re: [DejaVu-fonts] Dejavu Sans crashes GTK+ applications?]

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Dear All,
There is a possible bug in GTK+ (or other related libraries) that is
triggered by a specific font, DejaVu Sans. The result is that
applications such as gedit, gucharmap and file-roller crash when they
handle these two specific glyphs.

I would be grateful if you could have a look and give some feedback on
where exactly is the bug; is it GNOME or DejaVu Sans doing something
illegal?

Cheers,
Simos

On Sun, 2006-02-19 at 20:34 +0100, Denis Jacquerye wrote:
> On 2/19/06, Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Ben,
> > Is http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/snapshots/dejavu-ttf-20060215-573.zip
> > the 2.3 release candidate?
> > (from http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/snapshots/?M=D)
> 
> Yes, that is the release candidate.
> http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Release_candidates

Hi All,
I just verified that even with dejavu-ttf-20060215-573, GTK+
applications crash when they try to display those two Unicode
characters, U+03B0 (ΰ) and U+0390 (ΐ).
This issue of crashing appears to happen in all GTK+ applications that
use the DejaVu Sans font. Any other font or Dejavu Serif/Dejavu Mono do
not exhibit this problem.

You can replicate this bug either
1. Following the steps described at 
https://launchpad.net/products/gedit/+bug/31910
2. You can also replicate with gucharmap;
 a. Set the system font to DejaVu Sans (System/Preferences/Fonts)
 b. Open gucharmap
 c. Go to the Greek Unicode group and find U+03B0 (ΰ) and U+0390 (ΐ).
 d. Right-click on either of them. The application crashes.
3. I managed to get other applications to crash (like file-roller) by
writing these characters as filenames.

We are in the process of "urging" the Ubuntu team to include DejaVu 2.2+
as it has proper coverage in DejaVu Mono for modern Greek.
If it is possible to fix DejaVu Sans so that GTK+ applications do not
crash, we are happy to have an excuse to push for the latest 2.3.

Cheers,
Simos