Bug#858142: xterm: ASCII underscore does not render when using -fa FreeMono -fs 14

["G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 07:24:55PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
> No, attached is a screenshot of "xterm -fa DejaVuSansMono -fs 14".

I think you may be getting FreeMono.ttf instead of DejaVuSansMono.ttf.

> > [1] On my Debian Stretch system installed freshly as of Friday, 17 March,
> > "matching" is a generous term.  "xfd -fa X-14" also brings up DejaVu
> > Sans Mono-14.  Frustratingly, "fc-list $pattern" as documented in the
> > fc-list(1) manpage seems to be useless, returning no matches no matter
> > what $pattern is.  But that's a bug for a different package...
> 
> Apparently fc-match gives better results than fc-list.  On my system it
> revealed that FreeMono is best matched by FreeMono.ttf coming from the
> fonts-freefont-ttf package, followed by DejaVuSansMono.ttf.

This could be the key.  I _don't_ have fonts-freefont-ttf installed, and
fc-match tells me:

$ fc-match FreeMono
DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"

Can you repro the problem if you temporarily uninstall fonts-freefont-ttf?

(Or override fontconfig/Xft's resolution order to force DejaVuSansMono.ttf to be
found first, but I don't know how to do that?)

Regards,
Branden