Comment 6 for bug 1769774

Here is the code which tries to figure out the system default font: https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~gnome-terminator/terminator/gtk3/view/head:/terminatorlib/config.py#L368

I went and asked on #gtk+ about this and this is what they said about the dconf/gsettings keys:

(20:20:58) ali1234: so why doesn't gtk2 use either of those? [font-name and monospace-font-name gsettings keys]
(20:21:16) Company: neither does GTK3
(20:21:28) Company: unless you use Wayland
(20:21:35) Company: and GTK2 doesn't support Wayland
(20:21:44) Company: gnome-settings-daemon uses them
(20:22:17) Company: which is why it's originally an /org/gnome/... setting - it's for the GNOME settings daemon
(20:22:47) Company: could also be gnome-session or whatever
(20:23:04) TingPing: gsd-xsettings reads them and converts it to xsettings
(20:23:19) Company: well, the setting is transfered to GTK apps by means of Xsettings
(20:27:19) Company: also: GDK_DEBUG=settings prints the XSettings on startup I think

So it is my understanding that Terminator should look at xsettings rather than going directly to gsettings/dconf over DBus, since gsettings may not even be in use at all.

The GDK_DEBUG variable shows that the correct xsettings fonts are being passed to Terminator, it just ignores them.