JDK-8059751 : Add fontconfig.properties file for SLES 12
  • Type: Enhancement
  • Component: client-libs
  • Sub-Component: 2d
  • Affected Version: 6-pool
  • Priority: P2
  • Status: Resolved
  • Resolution: Fixed
  • OS: linux
  • Submitted: 2014-10-06
  • Updated: 2014-12-15
  • Resolved: 2014-10-10
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JDK 6
6u91Fixed
Description
SLES12 will require a new fontconfig.properties for East Asian fonts to display correctly.

While we do not have a test system yet. We know that Java runtime will fall back to the default SLES fontconfig file if it can not find a specific one for SLES12. The font locations in the default file are really outdated and almost certainly not where fonts will be located in SLES12.

This is only an issue for 1.6.0 and earlier releases.
Comments
=== Critical Request Justification === This is not really a code change, but simply the addition of a new OS-specific default font configuration file so that Asian fonts work out-of-the-box on SLES/SLED 12. As such it is as low risk as any change could be (short of perhaps a doc change). The issue itself is very high-impact, all Chinese / Korean / Japanese locales are completely unusable on the latest release of SUSE's popular distribution. Many users, both internal and external, are very likely to try using JDK6 on SLES/SLED 12. Almost all Oracle products bundle a JRE. Unfortunately the version currently bundled most often by Oracle products today is JDK6. Regardless of our (lack of) plans regarding official certification, the lack of east-Asian font support on SLES/SLED 12 will impact a large number of our customers, many of whom may not even understand that their product is using Java under the hood. We do not seem to have much (if any) influence over what versions of Java get bundled with other Oracle products. The only thing we can do is get a fix into our product as soon as possible and hope that most products update frequently enough to pick up the change soon. Unfortunately, many Oracle products update their bundled JRE very infrequently. Given the extremely low risk of this addition, the importance this functionality provides, and the impact of JRE/JDKs without this new file being shipped in countless other Oracle products, I strongly believe that we should get this into the absolute earliest CPU release possible.
10-10-2014