bug#33996: Is it hard to fix this problem?

[Tadeus Prastowo]

I just downloaded v0.16 and installed it on the bare hardware using
the minimal desktop configuration (the one whose example includes
`ratpoison').

After `guix package -i icecat', running it will show boxes as reported
by the OP.  I confirm that OP's solution of `guix package -i
font-gnu-freefont-ttf' fixes this problem.  Can't this be fixed at its
root, please?  It has been two months.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Tadeus