Why GNOME shell hardcodes font?

Desktop
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Why GNOME Shell has hardcoded “Cantarell 11”? https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/blob/master/data/theme/gnome-shell-sass/_common.scss#L30

GNOME has gsetting called /org/gnome/desktop/interface/font-name — GNOME enforces GTK to use that font. Of course I understand that GS uses its own shell toolkit instead GTK but why shell does not read that gsetting too?

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In short: history.

In the early days, hardcoding was the easiest option to change the default:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=634226

Then nobody got around writing a patch:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688288

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Thanks for info. Is there any chance to fix that issue in GNOME3? Or, is there any chance to fix that in next major release? What do you think, is it hard to fix?

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It is probably not very hard. I cannot test right now, but the following should work (or at the very least not be too far from it):

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/merge_requests/486

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Would you accept a patch? If so, what would be the parameters under which you would approve it in case some enterprising person wants to hang on it?

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I already wrote one myself, so tentatively yes (unless I’m giving @tbernard a heart attach).

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Oh excellent, good to know. I assume this will go into tweaks then.

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The current MR uses the existing font-name setting in org.gnome.desktop.interface, so unless we add another key, it already has UI in Tweaks.

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