Character combination fails saving charts `Error: Unable to merge embeddings of different levels`

[adisarid]

When trying to save charts with text combining Hebrew characters and English/Numeric characters, the saving process fails with an error message: Error: Unable to merge embeddings of different levels.

Here is the code to reproduce the bug:

plot_fails <- ggplot() + 
  ggtitle("טקסט בעברית עם מספר 7")
ggsave("tmp.png", plot_fails)

(You can replace '7' with any Latin character and it also fails).

Saving with only Hebrew characters (remove the '7') or only Latin characters works fine. The graphical device also works fine (the "Plots" pane in rstudio)

I've ran into this error message in various use cases that depend on ggplot2, e.g., when rendering ggplots in shiny apps, using officer to write presentations (makes sense...), etc.

Here is my sessionInfo():

R version 4.4.3 (2025-02-28)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Running under: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.10.0 
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.10.0

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C           LC_TIME=C.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=C.UTF-8     LC_MONETARY=C.UTF-8   
 [6] LC_MESSAGES=C.UTF-8    LC_PAPER=C.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C              LC_ADDRESS=C           LC_TELEPHONE=C        
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=C.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C   

time zone: Etc/UTC
tzcode source: system (glibc)

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices datasets  utils     methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] ggplot2_3.5.2

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] vctrs_0.6.5       cli_3.6.4         knitr_1.50        rlang_1.1.5       xfun_0.52         processx_3.8.6   
 [7] renv_1.1.4        generics_0.1.3    textshaping_1.0.0 glue_1.8.0        colorspace_2.1-1  htmltools_0.5.8.1
[13] ps_1.9.1          ragg_1.4.0        rmarkdown_2.29    scales_1.3.0      grid_4.4.3        evaluate_1.0.3   
[19] munsell_0.5.1     tibble_3.2.1      fastmap_1.2.0     yaml_2.3.10       lifecycle_1.0.4   compiler_4.4.3   
[25] dplyr_1.1.4       fs_1.6.5          pkgconfig_2.0.3   rstudioapi_0.17.1 digest_0.6.37     systemfonts_1.2.3
[31] R6_2.6.1          reprex_2.0.2      tidyselect_1.2.1  pillar_1.10.2     callr_3.7.6       magrittr_2.0.3   
[37] tools_4.4.3       withr_3.0.2       gtable_0.3.6     

[teunbrand]

I'm afraid this would most likely be a device thing, as the details of text rendering often is. The particulars of your report suggest that it is due to bidirectional text rendering. What graphics device are you using? Does it improve when you're using e.g. ragg::agg_png() or svglite::svglite()?

[thomasp85]

This sounds like an issue with textshaping. I'll look into it

[thomasp85]

This has been fixed in dev textshaping

[adisarid]

Works like a charm. Thanks!