Some glyphs missing after v3.x.x update

[luizkowalski]

🗹 Requirements

• I have searched the issues for my issue and found nothing related and/or helpful
• I have searched the FAQ for help
• I have searched the Wiki for help

🎯 Subject of the issue

Experienced behavior:
this morning I updated some deps on my computers and some fonts were updated as well but this is not a big deal since this has happened before, but after the update finished I noticed some icons on my neovim were wrong like the Gemfile icon and the X for closing a buffer:

This was weird so I decided to delete all custom fonts I had, clean up the cache, re-download them manually, and reinstall it. To my surprise, nothing has changed

No idea what is going on, this is my text configuration on iTerm2:

Neovim version:

:version
NVIM v0.9.0
Build type: Release
LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta3

   system vimrc file: "$VIM/sysinit.vim"
  fall-back for $VIM: "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/neovim/0.9.0/share/nvim"

No Neovim config has been changed prior to today or after this.

Expected behavior:
X and missing icons should exist

Example symbols:

🔧 Your Setup

• Which font are you using (e.g. Anonymice Powerline Nerd Font Complete.ttf)?
  • Fira Code Nerd Font and Fira Code Nerd Font Mono
• Where did you get the file from (download link, self patched, source downloaded from link...)
  • Homebrew and manually download
• Which terminal emulator are you using (e.g. iterm2, urxvt, gnome, konsole)?
  • iterm2
• Are you using OS X, Linux or Windows? And which specific version or distribution?
  • MacOS

One more screenshot from other missing icons

I guess it should've been the "unknown file" icon

[Finii]

Can you try to copy and paste the missing-icon-characters into a comment as text here? I can determine the codepoints then.

[dbuch]

Right, I can confirm this problem.

Which font are you using (e.g. Anonymice Powerline Nerd Font Complete.ttf)?

Fira Code Nerd Font and Fira Code Nerd Font Mono

Same here.

Are you using OS X, Linux or Windows? And which specific version or distribution?

Linux (Arch linux)

[Finii]

I fear the missing icon are from the dropped Material Design Icons set. But we need the codepoints or the characters copy as text an pasted into a comment to see.

I also use neovim, I have never seen that gui-ish thing, what is the command to activate that?

[luizkowalski]

Couldn't copy but I guess I managed somehow to see some info when right-clicking with the mouse:

This one is the .rbi file, probably "unknown file" icon

This one was the close button:

I have never seen that gui-ish thing, what is the command to activate that?

That would be Telescope with git_files command

[luizkowalski]

Also, noticed that .svg files have this weird icon that looks like something in Arabic?

[Kedap]

I think it's a problem with the icon pack like 'neovim-web-devicons' or packages like that. Something similar happens to me but with cascadia code (original) and also with fira code (Fira Code Nerd Font). In the first case I thought it was just a cascadia code error, so I installed CaskaydiaCove but the problem persists. This all started this morning when I decided to update, which is the same archlinux.

nf-mdi-format_size error render

The deprecated tag seems to indicate something

This is the same with other icons. But something curious is that Caskaydia is installed in kitty and FiraCode in wezterm and with wezterm if I can see the second icon

I think a lot of popular icons are marked as deprecated and therein lies the problem. As far as I see what happens, I will continue to regret updating :(

[luizkowalski]

oh, good find! yeah, the X icon (F655) is obsolete too, which proves your point

[Kedap]

For example:
onsails/lspkind.nvim#64

[luizkowalski]

there is a PR for it already on nvim tree devicons too: nvim-tree/nvim-web-devicons#264

[Finii]

Reason

Historically Nerd Fonts patched the Material Design Icons to codepoints F500 - FD46. The problem with part of these codepoints is that they are not 'free to use' (what Unicode calls PUA), but contain glyphs that are needed for some non-english languages.
There are a lot issues raised, and rightfully so. The problem has been discussed at length here:

• [Suggestion] Fix invalid code points for some glyphs #365

Additionally people wanted the Material Design Icons to update. The problem with that was that the number of icons increased considerably; and the MDI themselves moved codepoints to PUA-A. Several solutions have been discussed and what finally has been choosen was this:

• Add New Material Design Icons to its own region #773

Strategy

That moving codepoints would hurt you was clear. On the other hand imagine that someone stole you the capital letter A to put some obscure icon there. To lessen the hurt the new codepoints have been activated with Nerd Fonts v2.3.0 already and hinted that people should migrate to the new codepoints "now" (Compare its release notes):

Some projects did it, some people wrote codepoint converters (unfortunately I did not compile a list, maybe we could do it in this thread). For sure most people did not see the release notes 🙄

To help people the icons have been tagged in the cheat sheet, and there is now a 'database' of the icons [1], and a rough translation list [2].

• Mark old MDI as obsolete on cheat sheet #1097

Finally with the major release the new codepoints (and new icons) are the only codepoints to reach the Material Design Icons:

• Update octicons and drop old MDI #1156

[1] https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/blob/master/glyphnames.json
[2] #1059 (comment) (open the details in this comment)

Edit: Add word 'raised' in 1st paragraph