Hina

Hi Jon, Thanks for getting back to me - no worries at all. I completely understand that legacy X11/Motif font handling is notoriously difficult to work with. Btw I really like how the default sharp, non-anti-aliased fonts look, I'm just kinda looking for customized fallback system. I’ll leave this ticket open as a reference point in case anyone decides to tackle the font system or XFT rework in the future. Thanks for keeping CDE alive and for all your hard work on the project!

I just made a crucial discovery: the lucida bright font that partially worked was a system-provided font (likely a legacy core X font). However when I load user-imported TrueType Lucida Bright Font , it behaves exactly like the lucida sans typewriter mentioned earlier, the text simply disappears completely.

Using only a CJK font (MingLiU) as the default: Result: The CJK characters fail to display and instead turn into a jumbled mix of Latin characters.

Replacing dt-interface-user (monospace) with lucida sans typewriter: Result: The text actually disappears completely.

Inconsistent font fallback behavior and mojibake with CJK fonts in en_US.UTF-8 locale