Merriweather Sans字体字母l重复问题技术咨询（ArchLinux环境）

Alright, let's tackle your two Merriweather Sans font issues step by step—they both likely relate to how the font handles character combinations or interacts with your system's rendering engine.

1. Why does Merriweather Sans repeat the letter 'l' in "flying point"? #

This unusual behavior typically stems from one of a few common issues:

• Buggy ligature or glyph substitution: Many fonts use ligatures (combined glyphs) for character pairs like "fl" to improve readability. If Merriweather Sans's ligature logic has a flaw, it might incorrectly duplicate the 'l' when rendering this pair, especially if your system's renderer is prioritizing ligature substitutions aggressively.
• Rendering engine incompatibility: On Linux, fonts are rendered via engines like FreeType. If the font's glyph tables don't play nicely with your installed FreeType version, it can cause glitches like duplicate characters.
• Corrupted font file: If your installed ttf-merriweather-sans package has a corrupted font file (e.g., incomplete glyph data), it might render characters incorrectly. Try reinstalling the package with sudo pacman -S --reinstall ttf-merriweather-sans to rule this out.

2. Why does "Col·laborador" render as "Coll·laborador" in Merriweather Sans 1.006-3 on Arch Linux? #

This is a specific issue with how the font handles the Catalan language's middle dot separator (U+00B7), which is used to indicate that two 'l's are separate (not forming the Catalan "ll" digraph). Here's what's probably happening:

• Ignored separator in glyph substitution: Merriweather Sans might have a substitution rule that automatically converts "ll" into a single ligature glyph, and it's failing to recognize the middle dot as a break between the two 'l's. Instead, it's applying the ligature logic and adding an extra 'l' when rendering.
• Font design oversight: The 1.006-3 version of the font might not have proper support for Catalan orthography, specifically the separated 'l·l' pattern. Other fonts (like system default sans-serifs) likely include explicit handling for this separator, which is why they render correctly.

Troubleshooting steps to confirm and fix: #

• Verify your input character: Run echo "Col·laborador" | hexdump -C in your terminal to ensure the middle character is indeed U+00B7 (you should see the hex value b7 in the output). This rules out accidental use of a different dot character.
• Disable ligatures temporarily: Test rendering the text with ligatures disabled. For example, in LibreOffice, go to Format > Character > Font Effects and uncheck "Ligatures". If the text renders correctly, the issue is definitely with the font's ligature rules.
• Check font glyph data: Use a tool like FontForge to open the Merriweather Sans font files (usually located at /usr/share/fonts/TTF/MerriweatherSans-*.ttf) and look for substitution rules involving "ll" or "l·l". You can see if there's an incorrect rule that's adding an extra 'l'.
• Test a newer font version: Check if there's an updated version of ttf-merriweather-sans available (either via Arch's AUR or the official font repository). Sometimes these orthography bugs are fixed in newer releases.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者somenxavier