Firefox 3 in Ubuntu- No text, just lines showing on most web sites e.g. google

Bug #258778 reported by Chris Gaskell
26
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

As said in the header, some pages work e.g. bbc.co.uk and some don't google and facebook.

I'm a 'novice' user, and have simply reinstalled firefox as an (unsuccessful) effort to fix this.

My ubuntu (8.04) system is just a few days old, and everything is straight out of the box, except for the automatic system updates.

If anyone does have a suggested solution, I'd appreciate it in fairly simple terms please guys :)

Opening up the error console in firefox 3, if it helps, I can see errors such as:

'Error in parsing value for property height'
'Error in parsing value for property width'

It may be coincidence, but this happened after opening up the Torcs game?????

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Aug 17 19:08:40 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.3
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic i686

Tags: apport-bug
Revision history for this message
Chris Gaskell (chris-gaskell) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Chris Gaskell (chris-gaskell) wrote :

Fixed. Reinstalled MSTT corefonts, and all good :)

Revision history for this message
Rajeev Sahasrabudhe (cardonline-india) wrote :

I was trying to load kiran marathi font. Then this problem appeared. How can I get the text instead of lines?

Revision history for this message
LowLightImages (drh-lowlightimages) wrote :

Got the same problem after installing MS TT fonts. I'm assuming I didn't do it correctly so I'll:
* Removing them & check the problem disappears
* Then re-installing them
* If the problem recurs after trying those fonts from two different sources I'll report it as a different bug

Revision history for this message
LowLightImages (drh-lowlightimages) wrote :

Problem solved:

I had simply copied the MS TT fonts to a font folder on the Linux machine & run font update. Looking at the other fonts in the folder I noticed that the filenames either had a "tt-" prefix to the font name or nothing - i.e. no ".ttf" postfix.

I renamed all the files from "xxxx.ttf" to "tt-xxxx", re-ran the cache update and everything now works :) The fonts are all available in OO3 Writer etc. I'm guessing there's a piece of code somewhere that doesn't like filenames with a full stop in them :) If I get time, I'll try & find it & fix it but as I don't know my way around the X11 font system at all, don't hold your breath!

As usual, my thanks to all the people who do work on OO software

Revision history for this message
John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote :

I dont have instructions on how to install fonts but there is a wiki about it. Not firefox issue

Changed in firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu):
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
cwilliams (charleswilliams114) wrote :

I have the same problem on my Ubuntu Firefox, just lines but no text on many web sites, like google and cnn.
No fonts were installed recently. The problem occurred immediately after I installed odvr (olympus driver -- it successfully downloads wav files from my voice recorder). Thinking maybe this would help: I upgraded to Firefox 3, but no luck.

I've read over this page a few times. The font problem isn't mine. Otherwise I'm afraid I do not see instructions for a fix. If you like, I can install whatever font you like. A few months ago I installed some ornamental font and Liberation.

Thanks

Revision history for this message
LowLightImages (drh-lowlightimages) wrote : Re: [Bug 258778] Re: Firefox 3 in Ubuntu- No text, just lines showing on most web sites e.g. google

I managed to provoke the problem again by changing the "hinting"
settings". I had to hand edit config files to get things working again.

cwilliams wrote:
> I have the same problem on my Ubuntu Firefox, just lines but no text on many web sites, like google and cnn.
> No fonts were installed recently. The problem occurred immediately after I installed odvr (olympus driver -- it successfully downloads wav files from my voice recorder). Thinking maybe this would help: I upgraded to Firefox 3, but no luck.

I don't believe this is purely a FF problem - I think this is down to
the way FF is asking the system to render fonts.
>
> I've read over this page a few times. The font problem isn't mine.

I'd check to see if the Olympus software has installed any fonts. Not
what you'd expect but you never know (e.g. Sony software is notorious
for installing a ton of stuff you wouldn't expect/want).

> Otherwise I'm afraid I do not see instructions for a fix. If you like, I
> can install whatever font you like. A few months ago I installed some
> ornamental font and Liberation.

Dave Harris
http://www.zazzle.com/lowlightimages*

Revision history for this message
frizzle21 (frederik-nnaji) wrote :

i used fonty python to "install" some MS Fonts for DTP purpose on my Jaunty box..
the fonts were on a manually mounted Windows System partition.
after restarting the system, this partition obviously didn't automount, which is all good and all correct.

unfortunately, fonty python didn't copy the respective fonts to the system drive or anywhere near into e.g. my homedir/fonts.. instead, the fonts were declared available, so applications tried using them such as firefox, but the ttf files needed to actually use the fonts were on an unmounted drive..

how useless!!!

how can we avoid this kind of nonsense in the future?

after mounting my windows system drive, firefox doesn't have these problems anymore...

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