The problem of automatically generating an avatar for a Chinese user name

[Collin_Wu]

Hello everyone, I ’m from China
I found a small problem with the user’s default avatar during use

nextcloud version: 25 to 28
System version:centos 7.9
webserver:nginx 1.16.1 ; php 8.0.28
Browser version:Firefox 121.0 、Google Chrome 120.0、Microsoft Edge 120.0、etc

The problem is this
When creating an account for a user
When entering a Chinese name
The avatar picture will look like this:

No problem in english:

I know it does n’t affect the experience
But I still want to solve it
Then the interface will be more beautiful
thank you all

[kesselb]

Thanks for letting us know

Would you mind inserting the not working character here in the forum so we can copy it and try to reproduce locally?

I tried “丹尼尔” and the result looks a bit different but still broken

It’s indeed a tricky question how to make it work.

The implementation tries different ways to generate the avatar.

With image magick: server/lib/private/Avatar/Avatar.php at 86575c96e39e9cc31d9c257cae1a41b2bfe36755 · nextcloud/server · GitHub

Without image magick we fallback to gd: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/blob/86575c96e39e9cc31d9c257cae1a41b2bfe36755/lib/private/Avatar/Avatar.php#L174

Question: Is php-imagick installed and enabled on your server?

We are using Noto Sans - Google Fonts to generate the avatars.

This font indeed does not support Chinese characters. You could try to replace the font with Noto Sans Simplified Chinese - Google Fonts and see if that works.

It would be really nice to have a better solution sometime. I’m not so familiar with this topic, and therefore always happy about your input/ideas.

Imagick and GD let us use one Font. I didn’t see a way to specify multiple fonts.

I thought about merging the font files, but that’s not so easy according to https://www.reddit.com/r/fonts/comments/nvqxu0/is_there_a_completely_combined_noto_font/ and How to combine two or more fonts? · Issue #167 · notofonts/noto-fonts · GitHub.

Another approach could be to add Noto Sans SC too and then check if the display name contains Chinese character and then pick Noto Sans SC over regular (e.g. cjk - What's the complete range for Chinese characters in Unicode? - Stack Overflow)

There is a closed bug report that looks similar to your problem: Avatar.php Garbled code · Issue #25427 · nextcloud/server · GitHub. I assume it’s closed because it was a bit unspecific.

cc @jan @szaimen

[Collin_Wu]

It is true that this problem also occurs when I upgrade to version 24 from version 23. However, there is a way to fix it.

Before:

After:

The specific way to fix it is to upload the NotoSans font that supports Chinese. For example, core/fonts/NotoSansCJKtc-Light.ttf (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TWJgVJhwVoW7DKu69e8zmvxshn7AyU_P/view), and then edit lib/private/Avatar/Avatar.php to replace it:

sed -i 's/NotoSans-Regular.ttf/NotoSansCJKtc-Light.ttf/' lib/private/Avatar/Avatar.php

However, this method is no longer applicable when I upgrade to version 25 or higher.

[kesselb]

Hi,

Please upgrade to Nextcloud 26 or higher as soon as possible.
Everything below is end of life and not maintained anymore.

More technical details about the avatar generation and fonts: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/25529

The following patch may make the avatar generation work: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/42534

However, I don’t know if that’s already enough.

[Collin_Wu]

Thank you, you have given me hope of solving the problem.
It is possible that my installation method and environment are different, and I have not solved the problem. My environment is as follows:

nextcloud version: 28.0.0
System version:centos 7.9
webserver:nginx 1.16.1 ; php 8.0.28
Installation method:Community Manual installation with Archive
Browser version:Firefox 121.0 、Google Chrome 120.0、Microsoft Edge 120.0、etc

Of course, it is also possible that I misunderstand the content described in Fix non LGC glyphs in avatars and txt file previews by danxuliu · Pull Request #25529 · nextcloud/server · GitHub 1.

I wonder if there is a solution that directly points out the problem and provides a solution for my environment?

According to the provided link information, it seems that I need to recompile PHP to enable GD support for Raqm.
On the one hand, I cannot find the Raqm or libraqm extension package in PHP’s PECL.
On the other hand, after installing libraqm-devel and libraqm via yum, I recompiled PHP, but the avatar issue remains the same.

[kesselb]

@Collin_Wu

According to the provided link information, it seems that I need to recompile PHP to enable GD support for Raqm.

I don’t think you need to recompile libgd or php.
The part about libraqm is relevant for right-to-left languages.

Mind giving feat: generate avatars for display name with chinese characters by kesselb · Pull Request #42534 · nextcloud/server · GitHub a try?