#1037311 rxvt-unicode: Xft font fallback issues when using subpixel rendering and URxvt.letterSpace: -2

Package:
rxvt-unicode
Source:
rxvt-unicode
Description:
RXVT-like terminal emulator with Unicode and 256-color support
Submitter:
anonymous
Date:
2023-06-11 01:54:04 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1037311#5
Date:
2023-06-11 01:50:13 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

On bookworm, I'm having font rendering issues under urxvt when using Xft subpixel rendering (Xft.rgba: rgb) and URxvt.letterSpace: -2 in ~/.Xresources.

pic of what I mean: https://files.catbox.moe/mnb790.png
expected bullseye behavor on the left, bookworm on the right

I use xft:Go Mono:pixelsize=13, It's falling back to some unknown serif font.
From what I understand, in bullseye, it would just draw the glyph even if it was being cut-off, now it either draws a box or uses an ugly fallback font.
I also notice that this adds significant latency to terminal output, random glyphs will also flicker as I type.

When I run urxvt from the terminal, stderr spits out various errors to the tune of
urxvt: unable to calculate font width for <font name> using max_advance_width
But the fonts it lists are stuff like DejaVu Sans Mono, Courier New, Andale Mono and FreeMono, none of which I'm using in my ~/.Xresources and I can't find where these are being defined in /etc either.

I found that setting Xft.rgba: none and URxvt.letterSpace: -1 fixes all these issues but it forces me to live without subpixel rendering.

I marked as important because this makes urxvt considerably difficult to uses and I'm holding off on upgrading to bookworm because of it.
I can provide more information if you need it, my email is epoca39@gmail.com, thank you.