There is a problem with the display of Chinese fonts

[smoosex]

this is in ghostty:

this is in kitty:

in ghostty, Some Chinese fonts are bold, some are light，I used same font family in ghostty and kitty.

[KiaraGrouwstra]

this may not help much, but for what it's worth, it looks like the characters ghostty shows in bold are present in Japanese as well, while the light ones seem to be characters specific to simplified Chinese.

[pluiedev]

What font is this? I use LXGW NeoXiHei and I couldn't reproduce. (My guess would be that font synthesis is broken?)

[smoosex]

Previously I used JetBrainsMono.
The following config can make Chinese show Normally.

font-family = "Maple Mono NF"
font-codepoint-map = "U+4E00-U+9FFF,U+3400-U+4DBF = LXGW WenKai"

[mitchellh]

This looks like an issue of choosing incorrect fallbacks. Can you use ghostty +show-face to print this string and tell me what fonts its choosing?

[acehinnnqru]

This problem still exists and I don't know how to determine what's the cause.

It would change to a random font after running for a duration (didn't change anything just using).

Try version 1.0.1—it works with PingFang SC on my machine.

Sadly, the ❯ symbol remains unchanged.

No, what I met is that the font would change during running but not it can't find the font. It works correctly for a duration and suddenly change to another font to render but the ghostty +show-face still output the correct font.

Restart the ghostty can fixed it but after a duration it would change to render another font...

That's saying that the rendered shape doesn't match the found font face.

[yaoyhu]

It works correctly for a duration and suddenly change to another font to render but the ghostty +show-face still output the correct font.

@acehinnnqru That’s interesting. You might want to provide a screenshot or a video to better illustrate the issue you’re experiencing.

[acehinnnqru]

@acehinnnqru That’s interesting. You might want to provide a screenshot or a video to better illustrate the issue you’re experiencing.

@yaoyhu

I don't how to trigger to change when running. But I have some screenshots previous.

The correct render behavior: The rendered face is PingFang SC.

When it change, the rendered change but the show-face still says it's PingFang SC:

[acehinnnqru]

it changes to another font again:

[acehinnnqru]

This is quite annoying. I can't manually reproduce it but I almost met it everyday... I have no idea how to trigger it or how to debug it

[acehinnnqru]

I found this issue randomly occured but not always. I didn't set font family, it worked great. But today I found sometimes it would use the wrong fallback. I can't reproduce it.

[acehinnnqru]

I was coding in neovim for several hours, and it suddenly changed to another font. It behaves some weird.

[pluiedev]

how can I see what had happened?

Try using the +show-face action and see what fonts it's using for each character

[acehinnnqru]

how can I see what had happened?

Try using the +show-face action and see what fonts it's using for each character

I have tried this and it shows the correct font family. My issue is that it changes when using.

[zwyyy456]

I found this issue randomly occured but not always. I didn't set font family, it worked great. But today I found sometimes it would use the wrong fallback. I can't reproduce it.

I have the same problem, too.

[acehinnnqru]

I still meet this issue randomly, I can't reproduce it manually...

[acehinnnqru]

This should be a bug:

The drawn font isn't "PingFang SC".

[ShikChen]

I encountered the same issue with the PingFang TC font (the default macOS font for Traditional Chinese). It isn't always reproducible, but the following steps resolved it for me this time:

1. Comment out the font-family = SauceCodePro Nerd Font Mono line in the ghosty config.
2. Reload using Cmd+Shift+,. The font then falls back to JetBrains Mono, and the bold rendering issue disappears.
3. Restore the original font-family line. The Chinese characters continue to display correctly afterward.

[nyngwang]

What TC characters did you use to trigger those bold chars? I'm trying to reproduce it with PingFang TC, but haven't made it. I tested "字體測試" and my random notes, but those chars didn't go wrong. On the other hand, I needed to use very large font-size to read those TC characters clearly because PingFang TC made them very small on font-size = 20. It would be great if there is some example document that can trigger the bug more frequently. (anyway, just trying to help~)

related config on testing:

font-size = 20
font-family = "PingFang TC"
font-style = default
font-style-bold = default
font-style-italic = default
font-style-bold-italic = default
font-synthetic-style = no-bold,italic,no-bold-italic
font-feature =
font-variation =
font-variation-bold =
font-variation-italic =
font-variation-bold-italic =
font-codepoint-map =
font-thicken = true
font-thicken-strength = 0

[shilohlee98]

I’ve encountered the same issue, just like @ShikChen — I’m using macOS with PingFang TC (default font is JetBrainsMono Nerd Font).

I’ve also found a way to 100% reproduce the problem. The workaround provided by @ShikChen does solve the bold rendering issue.

Interestingly, I discovered that whether I comment out or uncomment the font-family field and then reload the config, it always fixes the problem.

The key point is: if I close Ghostty using Command+Q, the issue will reappear next time I launch it.

My guess is that there might be a problem when Ghostty initially loads the config — but once you modify font-family and reload, it correctly applies the fallback font?

reproduce video

[jiacai2050]

This bug also bite me as well, will try to find where the root cause is.

[hiql]

same issue, and reproduced when the laptop wakes up every time

[acehinnnqru]

Set the font of chinese you like as the last fallback font

[deeengan]

i seem to also have this issue on macos

/Applications/Ghostty.app/Contents/MacOS/ghostty +show-face --string="h歹"
U+68 « h » found in face “MonaspiceRn Nerd Font Mono”.
U+6B79 « 歹 » found in face “PingFang TC”.

but

/Applications/Ghostty.app/Contents/MacOS/ghostty +list-fonts

and PingFang TC is not listed

if i try

  font-family = "MonaspiceRn Nerd Font Mono", "Lantinghei TC"

it resets all fonts to JetBrainsMono and my Chinese font is stuck on LXGW WenKai Mono TC, which i am not sure how i set or changed

my rig only changes and displays

font-family = "MonaspiceRn Nerd Font Mono"

i have tried a variety of guides, commenting in and out, but any fallback for Chinese does not seem to use what is specified in the config

[Aaron-212]

Try this:

font-family = MonaspiceRn Nerd Font Mono
font-family = Lantinghei TC

[deeengan]

Try this:

font-family = MonaspiceRn Nerd Font Mono
font-family = Lantinghei TC

thanks. it is unfortunate, but that too does not seem to work for me. i can change many other things, like opacity etc. but it is the chinese font that seems to be stuck. i don't seem to have the bolding problem or instability that others do though. perhaps i will try again with your solution another way, another day 🌞

[deeengan]

Try this:

font-family = MonaspiceRn Nerd Font Mono
font-family = Lantinghei TC

ok i will say that after changing to tip it seems that i have the font i want working using your technique… fingers crossed, thanks

[shilohlee98]

This bug is somehow fixed in this release
https://ghostty.org/docs/install/release-notes/1-2-0#fallback-font-size-adjustment

[zeevenn]

still exists

[mitchellh]

This issue is very old, we've basically rewritten the font renderer since this, and I think there's too many non-actionable, non-specific issues in this one discussion. It's becoming a catch-all for all "this character doesn't look right" issues which isn't our goal here. We want to try to hone in on specific, actionable issues. As such, Im going to close this. If there are specific cases with the latest release, please reopen a new discussion

[yihuang]

It still exists on latest version (1.3.1) unfortunately.

[danielwe]

@yihuang see #9410 for the most informative and up-to-date tracking of this issue. This post seems to have made some progress toward a diagnosis: #9410 (comment).