Hebrew and digits don't render ("Failed to get emoji face")

[mattansb]

I found a problem when mixing Hebrew text with numbers - it causes the text to not appear. This does not affect other text in the figure.

Here are some oddities:

• The problem "disappears" when running the code through reprex::reprex() (on the same machine).
• saving the image with ggsave() as a .png also has the missing text (as below).
• saving the image with ggsave() as a .pdf has the text, but all of the Hebrew letters (regardless of mixing with numerals) are replaced with .s, which I suspect is a "standard" encoding problem.

Here is the code to reproduce the bug:

library(ggplot2)
#> Warning: package 'ggplot2' was built under R version 4.3.3

df <- data.frame(
  x = 1:3,
  y = 0,
  label = c("זה טקסט", 
            "this is text with number 1",
            "זה טקסט עם מספר 2")
)

ggplot(df, aes(x, y)) + 
  geom_label(aes(label = label))
#> Failed to get emoji face:  �����, 0
#> Failed to get emoji face:  �����, 0
#> Failed to get emoji face:  , 0
#> Failed to get emoji face:  , 0
#> Failed to get emoji face:  , 0

Session info

sessioninfo::session_info()
#> ─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#>  setting  value
#>  version  R version 4.3.2 (2023-10-31 ucrt)
#>  os       Windows 11 x64 (build 22631)
#>  system   x86_64, mingw32
#>  ui       RTerm
#>  language (EN)
#>  collate  English_Israel.utf8
#>  ctype    English_Israel.utf8
#>  tz       Asia/Jerusalem
#>  date     2024-07-25
#>  pandoc   3.1.1 @ C:/Program Files/RStudio/resources/app/bin/quarto/bin/tools/ (via rmarkdown)
#> 
#> ─ Packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#>  package     * version date (UTC) lib source
#>  cli           3.6.2   2023-12-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  colorspace    2.1-0   2023-01-23 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  curl          5.2.1   2024-03-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  digest        0.6.35  2024-03-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  dplyr         1.1.4   2023-11-17 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  evaluate      0.23    2023-11-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  fansi         1.0.6   2023-12-08 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  farver        2.1.2   2024-05-13 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  fastmap       1.2.0   2024-05-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  fs            1.6.4   2024-04-25 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  generics      0.1.3   2022-07-05 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  ggplot2     * 3.5.1   2024-04-23 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  glue          1.7.0   2024-01-09 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  gtable        0.3.5   2024-04-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  highr         0.10    2022-12-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  htmltools     0.5.8.1 2024-04-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  knitr         1.46    2024-04-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  labeling      0.4.3   2023-08-29 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  lifecycle     1.0.4   2023-11-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  magrittr      2.0.3   2022-03-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  munsell       0.5.1   2024-04-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  pillar        1.9.0   2023-03-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  pkgconfig     2.0.3   2019-09-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  purrr         1.0.2   2023-08-10 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  R.cache       0.16.0  2022-07-21 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  R.methodsS3   1.8.2   2022-06-13 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.0)
#>  R.oo          1.26.0  2024-01-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  R.utils       2.12.3  2023-11-18 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  R6            2.5.1   2021-08-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  reprex        2.1.0   2024-01-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  rlang         1.1.3   2024-01-10 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  rmarkdown     2.27    2024-05-17 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  rstudioapi    0.16.0  2024-03-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  scales        1.3.0   2023-11-28 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  sessioninfo   1.2.2   2021-12-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  styler        1.10.3  2024-04-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  tibble        3.2.1   2023-03-20 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  tidyselect    1.2.1   2024-03-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  utf8          1.2.4   2023-10-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.1)
#>  vctrs         0.6.5   2023-12-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  withr         3.0.0   2024-01-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  xfun          0.44    2024-05-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.3)
#>  xml2          1.3.6   2023-12-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#>  yaml          2.3.8   2023-12-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.3.2)
#> 
#>  [1] C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/R/win-library/4.3
#>  [2] C:/Program Files/R/R-4.3.2/library
#> 
#> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

[teunbrand]

Thanks for the report! This is an issue with graphics devices, which is beyond the control of ggplot2.

library(grid)
grid.newpage()
grid.text(
  x = c(0.25, 0.5, 0.75),
  y = 0.5,
  label = c("זה טקסט", 
            "this is text with number 1",
            "זה טקסט עם מספר 2")
)

#> Failed to get emoji face: pmcc�, 0
#> Failed to get emoji face: �, -922569248

^{Created on 2024-07-25 with reprex v2.1.1}

[mattansb]

Thanks @teunbrand.
Weird that this has 0 hits on Google.

[teunbrand]

If we take another device png(type = "cairo") here, we do render all 3 texts.
While I'm no expert in RtL languages, I think the glyph order is different than in the other device.

library(grid)
grid.newpage()
grid.text(
  x = c(0.25, 0.5, 0.75),
  y = 0.5,
  label = c("זה טקסט", 
            "this is text with number 1",
            "זה טקסט עם מספר 2")
)

^{Created on 2024-07-25 with reprex v2.1.1}

Another thing that you could try is to explicitly use a font that you know contains all the glyphs that you need. Font used in example below is available here: https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Hebrew. This sort-of looks correct to my untrained eye, but again, I'm no RtL language expert.

knitr::opts_chunk$set(dev = "ragg_png")

library(grid)
grid.newpage()
grid.text(
  x = c(0.25, 0.5, 0.75),
  y = 0.5,
  label = c("זה טקסט", 
            "this is text with number 1",
            "זה טקסט עם מספר 2"), 
  gp = gpar(family = "Noto Sans Hebrew")
)

^{Created on 2024-07-25 with reprex v2.1.1}

[mattansb]

Thanks!

How do integrate this solution with ggplot? adding sysfonts::font_add_google(name = "Noto Sans Hebrew") and then geom_text(family = "Noto Sans Hebrew") while saving to a ragg::agg_png doesn't seem to do anything?

[teunbrand]

Honestly, I don't know: it seems to fail on my end too and results are inconsistent.
Maybe @thomasp85 has a better idea than I do what is going on here.

Using straightforward print to device, the 2 is missing in 3rd text.

#+ setup, include=FALSE
knitr::opts_chunk$set(dev = "ragg_png")

#+ main
library(ggplot2)

df <- data.frame(
  x = 1:3,
  y = 0,
  label = c("זה טקסט", 
            "this is text with number 1",
            "זה טקסט עם מספר 2")
)

ggplot(df, aes(x, y)) + 
  geom_label(
    aes(label = label), 
    family = "Noto Sans Hebrew", hjust = 'inward'
  )

#> Failed to get emoji face: , 0
#> Failed to get emoji face: , 0
#> Failed to get emoji face: , 0
#> Failed to get emoji face: , 0

^{Created on 2024-07-25 with reprex v2.1.1}

Using ggsave() also has a missing 2 but also misjudges the text size based on the textbox placement:

library(ggplot2)

df <- data.frame(
  x = 1:3,
  y = 0,
  label = c("זה טקסט", 
            "this is text with number 1",
            "זה טקסט עם מספר 2")
)

p <- ggplot(df, aes(x, y)) + 
  geom_label(
    aes(label = label), 
    family = "Noto Sans Hebrew", hjust = 'inward'
  )

ggsave("temp.png", p, device = ragg::agg_png)
#> Saving 7 x 5 in image
#> Failed to get emoji face: �, 10
#> Failed to get emoji face: , 0
#> Failed to get emoji face: , 65024
knitr::include_graphics("temp.png")

^{Created on 2024-07-25 with reprex v2.1.1}

[mattansb]

This is weird - I now see that at least 4 months ago this did work (comparing a plot that use to render properly).
Hoping @thomasp85 has any ideas....

[teunbrand]

Let's just re-open this because ggsave() has behaviour I don't know how to explain

[teunbrand]

In the dev version of ggplot2, the ggsave() and print to device give the same results, which would mean that we're only left with the issue that devices cannot render some labels properly. However, this is not really something that ggplot2 has control over, so I'm going to close this again.