Linux uses modern loopless font?

[u/tufifdesiks]

I did the Memrise Thai course on a combination of Windows and Android. I'm still reviewing words and phrases in it every day, but I've recently installed Linux on my laptop and was surprised to see that instead of the traditional Thai font is uses the modern loopless Thai font. I've checked this in two browsers. It's a little strange to get used to but I'm slowly getting it. It's been a weakness for a while because so many signs and ads use this font and I couldn't read it at all before. Has anybody else noticed this?

[u/ikkue]

Most Linux distros default to the various Noto Sans fonts for non-Latin characters, and Noto Sans Thai is (unfortunately) loopless, which looks great for UI elements, but unfortunately isn't good for legibility. Noto Sans Thai Looped does exist too, but I personally find Google Sans the best looped font that looks great for both UI and normal text.

[u/Mike_Notes → u/[deleted]]

Probably not the clearest font for a learner. Too stylised in places such as the "beak" of ก, ถ &c. and the heads of ฆ, ซ, ฑ &c. look weird, as does the tail of ฬ.

[u/ikkue → u/Mike_Notes]

Yea, it's not great for beginners, but that's why I said I found it the best balance between beautiful for UIs and legibility for being looped

[u/Max-_-Power]

Yeah, it's very annoying when you learn to read Thai and for me it makes reading 50% more difficult.

[u/robrob883]

Yes its a big step into the new font. However if you keep at it it pays off. As you said its very widely used so we need to learn it.

[u/Chris_LaBonty]

I noticed this in the recent Ubuntu distribution. The older distributions didn't use the headless fonts. However, after using the latest distribution for a few months, I've gotten quite comfortable with the loopless font.

[u/tufifdesiks → u/Chris_LaBonty]

I'm using Ubuntu Studio, so that makes sense. It was a surprise, but I'm slowly getting used to it. I wish the course itself could have somehow taught both fonts when teaching the alphabet, since it seems like an important skill to have

[u/Chris_LaBonty → u/tufifdesiks]

Yeah, I was surprised too because I had used an older version of Ubuntu for a long time. I was about to search how to change it then thought I might as well get used to it as it's important. I could read it before but not as fast as a font with loops however after a few months it's gotten way easier.

[u/Mike_Notes]

I noticed a change from looped to loopless a few months ago - probably following a Linux Mint Debian Edition upgrade. I was able to fix things by deleting all Noto Sans Thai variants from my fonts folder.

[u/jnanin]

It's unfortunate that somehow the loopless variant is the "default" variant of Noto Sans Thai, which is then (understandably) adopted by other open source projects. Not that it's a bad typeface, just to me not really suitable as a body font.

On my Ubuntu desktop I have changed the configs so that the looped version of Noto Sans is used instead. I can't remember what I changed (I'll have to check later once I am at the machine), but essentially it involves overriding the fontconfig files in /etc/fonts/conf.d .