bug#15420: 24.3; Symbols like 🚴 (U+1F6B4) are not displayed by default

[Mike FABIAN]

After emacs -Q, try to load a file containing

🚲 U+1F6B2 BICYCLE
🚴 U+1F6B4 BICYCLIST
𓀀 U+13000 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH A001

Glyhps for these characters are not displayed by default,
even when fonts with these glyphs are installed.

For example "Symbola" by George Douros (http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/)
has 🚲 U+1F6B2 BICYCLE and 🚴 U+1F6B4 BICYCLIST and
"Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs" from Google has 𓀀 U+13000 EGYPTIAN
HIEROGLYPH A001.

Instead boxes showing the codepoints are displayed.

A patch like the following to fontset.el can make this
work by default:

commit 41fbdec67af4ea0dd2261c31554a5882e5cc4db6
Author: Mike FABIAN <mfabian@redhat.com>
Date:   Tue Sep 17 18:41:50 2013 +0200

    Display symbols like 🚴 U+1F6B4 BICYCLIST and Egyptian Hieroglyphs correctly 
by default

diff --git a/lisp/international/fontset.el b/lisp/international/fontset.el
index 2e15c43..25e575d 100644
--- a/lisp/international/fontset.el
+++ b/lisp/international/fontset.el
@@ -653,6 +653,10 @@
                    '("gnu-unifont" . "iso10646-1") nil 'prepend)
   (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" nil
                    '("mutt-clearlyu" . "iso10646-1") nil 'prepend)
+  (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" nil
+                   '("Symbola" . "iso10646-1") nil 'prepend)
+  (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" nil
+                   '("Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs" . "iso10646-1") nil 
'prepend)
   (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" '(#x20000 . #x2FFFF)
                    '(nil . "unicode-sip"))


But I am not sure whether this patch is the right way to do it.
Because it seems strange having to hardcode the font
names "Symbola" and "Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs".

Is there any other way to do it?

Isn’t it possible to make glyphs for such symbols display correctly by
default if *any* font containing these symbols is installed on
the system? How?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
In GNU Emacs 24.3.9 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.8.4)
 of 2013-09-18 on ari.site
Windowing system distributor `Fedora Project', version 11.0.11402000
System Description:     Fedora release 19 (Schrödinger’s Cat)

Configured using:
 `configure '--prefix=/packages/stow/emacs-24.3.20130917''

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: ja_JP.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=ibus
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Fundamental

Minor modes in effect:
  tooltip-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
M-x m a i <tab> <tab> <tab> <tab> <return> m i k e 
. f a b i a n @ g m x . d e C-n t e s s t <backspace> 
<backspace> t C-n C-n t e s t C-x C-s C-g <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> 
<right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> 
<right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> 
<right> <right> <right> r e d h a t . c o m C-d C-d 
C-d C-d C-d C-d C-d C-d C-x C-s C-g C-c C-c / <help-echo> 
<down-mouse-1> <mouse-1> <backspace> s m t p <return> 
l o c a l h o s t <return> <help-echo> <down-mouse-1> 
<mouse-1> M-x r e p o r t <tab> <return> <help-echo> 
<down-mouse-1> <mouse-1> <down-mouse-2> <mouse-2> <left> 
S y m b o l s l <backspace> SPC l i k e SPC C-e SPC 
U + <help-echo> <left> <left> ( C-e 1 F 6 B 4 ) SPC 
a n d SPC E g y p t i o n <backspace> <backspace> a 
n SPC H i e r o g l y p h s , SPC e . g . SPC M-x M-x 
<up> <return>

Recent messages:
Sending...
Setting `send-mail-function' temporarily since "emacs -q" would overwrite 
customizations
Setting `smtpmail-smtp-server' temporarily since "emacs -q" would overwrite 
customizations
Setting `smtpmail-smtp-service' temporarily since "emacs -q" would overwrite 
customizations
Sending email 
Sending email done
Sending...done
completing-read-default: Command attempted to use minibuffer while in minibuffer
Quit
user-error: End of history; no default available

Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
(shadow sort emacsbug network-stream starttls tls message format-spec
rfc822 mml mml-sec mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231
mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader mail-extr smtpmail auth-source eieio
byte-opt bytecomp byte-compile cconv gnus-util password-cache cus-edit
cus-start cus-load wid-edit mailalias sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045
ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils help-mode easymenu time-date
japan-util tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel x-win
x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list
newcomment lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select
scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham
georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao
korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic
indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple
abbrev minibuffer loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files
text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule
custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process
dbusbind dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting
move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty emacs)

-- 
Mike FABIAN <mfabian@redhat.com>
☏ Office: +49-69-365051027, internal 8875027
睡眠不足はいい仕事の敵だ。