Comment 5 for bug 1351092

Yes, it's weird. Right now I suspect that the configuration file 65-droid-sans-fonts.conf (attached), which the current fonts-droid package installs, is the root cause of this mess. That file seems to imply that if you install fonts-droid, you want Droid Sans fonts be used for all languages, while we are currently only interested in Droid Sans Fallback. In other words, it does not fit well with Ubuntu's default font configuration.

I have modified the packages in my PPA a little. From the changelogs:

fonts-android (1:4.3-3ubuntu1.1~ppa2) trusty; urgency=medium

  * Binary package split:
    - fonts-droid split into fonts-droid-cjk, which installs the Droid
      Sans Fallback font, and fonts-droid-general, which installs the
      rest. fonts-droid converted to a transitional dummy package
      which depends on fonts-droid-cjk.
  * debian/local/65-droid-sans-fonts.conf:
    - Recipes affecting Droid Sans Fallback dropped.

language-selector (0.129.3~ppa2) trusty; urgency=low

  * fontconfig/69-language-selector-zh-??.conf:
    Reverse changes in version 0.129.2.
  * data/pkg_depends:
    Replace fonts-droid with fonts-droid-cjk.

65-droid-sans-fonts.conf is installed by the new fonts-droid-general package, but the Droid Sans Fallback related entries have been removed. I think that the packages in my PPA are now in a state which makes them uploadable to the archive.

You may ask: Do we really need this package split? Wouldn't it be sufficient to modify (or drop) 65-droid-sans-fonts.conf? Honestly I'm not sure. To test that theory, you can simply install both fonts-droid-cjk and fonts-droid-general from my ppa. When I do so on my 14.04 desktop, it seems to work. At least for the moment...

@Lukas: Can you please do the same, and let us know if Chinese is still rendered correctly in the qt apps?

OTOH: Is it sensible to have to install all those fonts just to be able to use Droid Sans Fallback for Chinese? And what about the phone?

@Iain: Your comments on all this would be appreciated. Apparently something needs to be done, also in trusty.