Terminal not showing specified fontFamily

[dhirschfeld]

Description

I've installed Fira Code in my Ubuntu 18.04 container and am trying to use it for the JupyterLab terminal with no success..

The font is recognised by fc-list:

...but when I specify it in my terminal config:

{
    "fontFamily": "FiraCode Nerd Font",
    "fontSize": 16
}

It results in something that looks like double-spaced Times New Roman:

...which seems to be what happens when JupyterLab doesn't recognise the specified font (e.g. if you specify "dsfafds" you get the same result.)

If I specify consolas (or a fallback to consolas) the font renders correctly:

I've pretty exhaustively tried all ways of specifying the name, including quotes and no quote with no joy.

---

• Operating System and version:
• Browser and version: chrome 89.0.4389.90
• JupyterLab version: 3.0.14

[dhirschfeld]

Has anyone actually gotten this to work with a user installed font?

Does anyone have any suggestions of how to debug this?

[dhirschfeld]

xref: #6657

[dhirschfeld]

If I run the container as root specifying "fontFamily": "FiraCode Nerd Font" works 🎉

...so it seems like a permission error :/

[dhirschfeld]

I'm not sure running the container as root had any effect however what did work was installing the Fira Code font on the local users computer - i.e. it's not enough to just install the font in the JupyterLab container the user running JupyterLab also needs to have the font installed locally.

I'm not sure if there's a better way? Since this works though, I'll go ahead and close this...

[telamonian]

@dhirschfeld Dumb question: did you try setting

"fontFamily": "Fira Code"

?

I've run into similar trouble in the past, and in my case it was always about using the wrong font-family name. I just now tested this, this value:

"fontFamily": "FiraCode"

or any nonsense value:

"fontFamily": "foobarlas89yu3"

gives the strange double spaced font shown in the OP, while:

"fontFamily": "Fira Code"

and

"fontFamily": "fira code"

both correctly display Fira Code. I think the caps thing is because my apple filesystem is case insensitive

[dhirschfeld]

I think I tried all possible ways of specifying the Fira Code font name. I can double check...

[telamonian]

I think I tried all possible ways

I assumed. But the alternative explanation seems to be that your container runtime is leaking font config. Which sounds both fantastical and awful

[dhirschfeld]

Yeah - just tested all combos from a desktop without the Fira Code font installed and no joy.

[dhirschfeld]

In case it matters, it's actually the Fira Code Nerd Font:
https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases/download/v2.1.0/FiraCode.zip

Which (IIUC) is a patched version of Fira Code to include symbols used by the https://starship.rs/ prompt.

But the alternative explanation seems to be that your container runtime is leaking font config. Which sounds both fantastical and awful!

😆 It seems strange to me that I have to install a font locally. It's a bit of a hassle, but I'm glad found a workaround. If someone figures out a better solution I'm all ears. AFAIK my container is just an ordinary Ubuntu container with Python/JupyterLab installed. The relevant config:

RUN mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/truetype/firacode \
    && curl -sSL https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases/download/v2.1.0/FiraCode.zip -o ~/FiraCode.zip \
    && unzip ~/FiraCode.zip -d /usr/share/fonts/truetype/firacode/ \
    && find /usr/share/fonts/truetype/firacode/ -type f -name '*Windows*' -delete \
    && find /usr/share/fonts/truetype/firacode/ -type f -name '*otf' -delete \
    && fc-cache -fv \
    && chown -Rv 1000:1000 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/firacode \
    && rm -f ~/FiraCode.zip