Darktable - characters are square

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I am sorry, I do not have a solution for you, but as a Darktable fan myself...how did you install it, did you compile yourself?  

I installed it with snapd. It worked well except for this font thing. I'm going to look at that file and see if there's missing fonts I need to install. Here's a screenshot of how it looks on my system.

Paul,

Snaps are weird. They package their dependencies in isolation from the hosting system, but this means they can also suffer in isolation from some shared resources. This is commonly identified in GTK+ themes, etc. Usually, to match a desktop look and feel, the snap for a desktop theme must also be installed, that matches the one in /usr/share/themes, or wherever.

I suspect that the problem lies here. It's just not normal, that your UI font - set in an appearance control panel, is not picked up by the snap.

Either the snap is somehow set for a different locale/codepage - which is unlikely, or that the Darktable snap may need the fonts installed as additional snap packages themselves. It's worth looking for a solution here, because in other messages, you have already installed a huge number of typeface families, on many paths for fonts.

This is a topic probably best answered on https://forum.snapcraft.io/, tho' I've had mixed results with closing issues in that forum before - it's where the expertise will best be shared, and the findings of earlier users is searchable.

I hope this sets you along a helpful path for resolution. I look forward to your results.

Best,