ttf-tahoma-replacement makes some web-sites look ugly

[LoonyPhoenix]

Binary package hint: wine1.2

This font package is good for wine 1.2; however, it also makes sites look ugly in Firefox and other browsers. I had to manually remove the fonts from /usr/share/fonts/ to rectfiy this, because removing the package through apt would have made me remove wine 1.2 and I didn't want that.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Aug 12 00:23:40 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: ttf-tahoma-replacement 1.1.27-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-5.24-generic
SourcePackage: wine1.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-5-generic i686

[Alex Ivasyuv (industral)]

Confirm this bug. wine1.2 fonts makes same sites look ugly.
See attached screenshots.

[Alex Ivasyuv (industral)]

Tahoma font issue related for all browsers (FX, Opera, Chromium) and OpenOffice (seems and other application also).
For example, each page which has "font-family: tahoma;" property (in browser case) will has this issue.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

I'm confirming the issue as well.

The Tahoma replacement shouldn't be register as a system font - it should be isolated for use by Wine only.

As you can see from the example screenshots posted, the Tahoma replacement TTF doesn't support anti-aliasing or hinting properly, and makes font rendering inconsistent, particularly on websites.

Would it be possible to embed the .ttf as a resource within Wine itself (either in the executable, or preloaded into the default ~/.wine configuration)?

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Even after purging the packages and font files manually and doing countless "sudo fc-cache -f -v", I still can't get proper font rendering.

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

Yes, the font can be confined to Wine if needed. Not supporting anti-aliasing or hinting sounds like a bug with the way it's built, however -- at the moment the Wine package makes it using fontforge. Do we have a crippled fontforge?

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

The problem are the embedded bitmap glyphs, which get selected for small font sizes.

Please try if the attached fontconfig snippet fixes the problem:

$ sudo cp 20-tahoma.conf /etc/fonts/conf.avail/
$ sudo ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.avail/20-tahoma.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

Then test if the output in firefox and the rendering in wine is acceptable.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

The rendering is not acceptable since the workaround doesn't address the problem.

By disabling Tahoma, you're forcing other fonts to be used and thus creating a rendering that does not represent what it originally was before this bug.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

@Eric Appleman:
To which post are you referring?

Can you please test if the attached fontconfig configuration snippet fixes the rendering for you?
Thanks.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

I was referring to your snippet.

It doesn't fix the issue. It sidesteps it.

Facebook and other sites look a lot worse with that snippet.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Eric Appleman wrote:
> I was referring to your snippet.
>
> It doesn't fix the issue. It sidesteps it.
>
> Facebook and other sites look a lot worse with that snippet.
>

Can you please attach a screenshot?
The snippet does not disable the Tahoma font. It disabled the embedded
bitmaps within that font, so that the pure outlines are used and
anti-aliased/hinted according to your system setup.
Please open the file in a text editor and have a look for yourself.

Please also check in other applications, e.g. gedit, OpenOffice Writer,
etc. that Tahoma is rendered properly.

If it is acceptable in other applications, but not in firefox, that it's
either a configuration issue on your side or a bug in FF.

If it renders unacceptable in other applications as well, it would also
be a font configuration issue on your machine. I may follow up with you
on that one then. In this case, please also attach a screenshot of the
application you tested with.

Cheers
Arne

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

Arne, thanks for the workaround, it improves the appearance of the Tahoma substitute on my system.

Eric, ensure that you right-click on the attachment and choose "Save link as"; if you open the attachment in Firefox and save, it will mangle the xml data with html headers, and therefore will not work correctly.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

Well, my LCD screen is having problems with its backlight so I can't see the fine details, but perhaps the Tahoma replacement is not as professional as Deja Vu Sans (with anti-aliasing/hinting working in both).

Anyway, should the ttf-tahoma-replacement package be assigned to this bug?

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

ttf-tahoma-replacement is provided by Wine1.2

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Conn, I followed the directions properly the first time.

I also stand by my claim that the snippet produces a rendering that is not equivalent to the rendering in Firefox prior to this bug.

[Felix Geyer (debfx)]

When 20-tahoma.conf is installed the font looks much better for me.
Though the question is if wine1.2 should force the installtion of tahoma-replacement as a system font.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

I think the problem goes beyond wine1.2

I'm noticing the crappy fonts on a fresh Karmic install even after the restricted Microsoft and Liberation fonts were installed. It wasn't like this in Jaunty.

The 20-tahoma.conf file is the only thing that fixes it.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Eric "Starks" Appleman wrote:
> I think the problem goes beyond wine1.2
>
> I'm noticing the crappy fonts on a fresh Karmic install even after the
> restricted Microsoft and Liberation fonts were installed. It wasn't like
> this in Jaunty.
>
> The 20-tahoma.conf file is the only thing that fixes it.

Please note that the 20-tahoma.conf file is the true fix for this, not a
workaround. The package lacks a fontconfig configuration for this font,
this file provides it and needs to be included in the package.

[And Clover (bobince)]

I agree with Eric, it's nothing to do with Tahoma as such: Karmic simply renders all fonts using embedded bitmaps where they are available. Did this used to happen? I don't remember having the problem before.

Most embedded bitmaps are much worse renderings that what FreeType would naturally produce, simply because they're not anti-aliased. I think Ubuntu should set embeddedbitmaps false as default, and only turn it on for the packaged CJK fonts that really need it (because their hinting isn't sufficiently good to make the characters readable at smaller sizes).

[LoonyPhoenix (loonyphoenix)]

I'm not sure bitmaps are such a bad thing, provided they are only used
without scaling. For the same reason png icons look better than svg
ones at native size.

2009/9/22, bobince <email address hidden>:
> I agree with Eric, it's nothing to do with Tahoma as such: Karmic simply
> renders all fonts using embedded bitmaps where they are available. Did
> this used to happen? I don't remember having the problem before.
>
> Most embedded bitmaps are much worse renderings that what FreeType would
> naturally produce, simply because they're not anti-aliased. I think
> Ubuntu should set embeddedbitmaps false as default, and only turn it on
> for the packaged CJK fonts that really need it (because their hinting
> isn't sufficiently good to make the characters readable at smaller
> sizes).
>
> --
> ttf-tahoma-replacement makes some web-sites look ugly
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/412195
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[And Clover (bobince)]

TTF Bitmaps are such a bad thing - that's what this bug is all about. The screenshots above demonstrate what using the embedded bitmaps looks like: Windows 2000. Most people don't want that.

PNG icons look good because they're designed to display nicely ‘smoothed’ with built-in anti-aliasing. This isn't possible with TTF embedded bitmaps, which are purely 1bpp monochrome.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package wine1.2 - 1.1.29-0ubuntu2

---------------
wine1.2 (1.1.29-0ubuntu2) karmic; urgency=low

  * debian/rules: create separate wine1.2-debug package
  * debian/control: only build libmpg123 on i386 (seems amd64 is broken)
  * fontconfig file for tahoma to disable embedded bitmaps (LP: #412195)

 -- Scott Ritchie <email address hidden> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:06:42 -0700

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Reopening.

Problem is not corrected. The font hinting is still wrong.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Look at the number "9" in particular.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

Well, the original bug was that the font applied no hinting, so we can at least confirm that part is fixed, yes? Technically the bug is fixed.

Eric, I see what you're seeing, but that may simply be due to the fact that this font was not created by a professional typographer (or perhaps fontforge lacks the precision to get professional results in all cases).

If the font can't rival the real Tahoma, perhaps we should still consider removing it system-wide (re-associating Tahoma back to DejaVu Sans), and allow only WINE make use of the replacement?

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

I'd file a new bug if I knew exactly which packages to file against and how to best describe the bug in useful and technical manner.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Eric "Starks" Appleman wrote:
> I'd file a new bug if I knew exactly which packages to file against and
> how to best describe the bug in useful and technical manner.

Please don't do that! It's not a bug, it's your personal preference in
combination with your personal environment (display hardware, preferred
set of fonts, language/script usage). That's something we cannot detect
and therefor cannot provide default configurations for. Also, there
would be an indefinite number of configuration possibilities, so that
task is just not feasible. Instead, please learn more about how
rendering, font hinting/instructing and your display hardware interact
together and how to configure fontconfig and put your personal
preferences for fontconfig in your ~/fonts.conf file.
We try to provide a sensible set of default settings for fontconfig in
Ubuntu, that work for most users and language environments. If you don't
like those, please adjust them in your home directory and personal settings.

Also, if you are the sysadmin of your machine, feel free to play around
with the files in /etc/fonts/conf.d/ and /etc/fonts/conf.avail/.

The bug here was that the embedded bitmaps of Tahoma got used by
default, where it's not desired. This bug has been fixed by providing
the configuration file. So, please leave the bug closed.

Thank you.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Arne. Your comment is appreciated, but it still doesn't change the fact that the correct rendering behavior from Jaunty other prior releases has been lost in Karmic.

[andrey i. mavlyanov (andrey-mavlyanov)]

Again this bug happen. Changing status to new

[bogdan2412 (b-tataroiu)]

The problem I have with this font is that "bold" doesn't really so anything. This can be seen in the "wrong.png" picture attached in comment #25: the names of your friends are bold on Facebook, but in that picture they appear the same as regular. I'm pretty sure that can't be by design and is a bug.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

I'd like to now point out that the fonts are still aliased up on a fresh system even after installing MS fonts and ttf-tahoma-replacement.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Of course, this only applies to certain websites and default rendering size for certain fonts. If I increase my zoom to the next level, the fonts are no longer aliased.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

I'm still puzzled as to why the 20-tahoma.conf snippet has not been implemented is not installed by default with Ubuntu.

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

Eric, it is: check /etc/fonts/conf.d after installing ttf-tahoma-replacement.

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

The fontconfig snippet is included and the font is no longer a dependency (rather a recommends), so I believe there's not much more that can be done Wine-side for this.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Why should I need to install ttf-tahoma-replacement when the snippet belongs in Ubuntu main?

I've used 4 different computers running Karmic and all of them need this snippet (and not ttf-tahoma-replacement!) in order for the web to look decent.

[Arseny Klimovsky (arseny.klimovsky)]

Actually, ttf-tahoma-replacement makes some sites looking ugly.
Probably this is only Cyrillic symbols.

I attached a screenshot for this site
http://www.computerra.ru/blog/sys/pismenny/324202/

[Hồng Quân (ng-hong-quan)]

The bug still happens with Vietnamese characters
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/7919/screenshot26i.png
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7844/screenshot27zg.png

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

So... Any hope on getting the snippet into the default Ubuntu install?

[regeneration (regeneration-deactivatedaccount)]

I'm suffering from the same issue.

[Vivien GUEANT (vivienfr)]

I confirm this bug in i386 and AMD64 Ubuntu 9.10 with the "ttf-tahoma-replacement" package.

It makes some web-sites look ugly. With firefox ou Epiphany web browser http://lafibre.info/ are no character bold if "ttf-tahoma-replacement" is installed.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

@Arne: as you suggested in #29, I researched fontconfig configuration files. If I put the attached file in my home directory (as ~/.fonts.conf), then Firefox no longer tries to use the Wine Tahoma replacement when websites request it. I copied the syntax from an example at http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration#Example_1

I disagree with your characterization of this bug. The original text is at the top of the page, but you say "The bug here was that the embedded bitmaps of Tahoma got used by default, where it's not desired." Those things are not equivalent. A better description is "The bug here is that Tahoma is installed and used *by the entire desktop*, where it's not desired."

The average user would expect:
1. Install "wine" or "wine1.2".
2. Run Windows applications.

Instead they experience:
1. Install "wine" or "wine1.2".
2. Run Windows applications.
3. The appearance of many websites in Firefox changes.

Even as an experienced user, #3 is not obviously related to the wine1.2 package. It is also not an advertised effect of wine1.2; the package description does not say, "Your web browser may start using the Tahoma replacement that Synaptic will install by default as a dependency of this package." Everyone commenting here, myself included, is surprised by this unintended effect of installing wine1.2.

Some clarification (from Scott, maybe) would help: does Wine use fontconfig in any way? If not, then it should be possible to apply the setting I am using system-wide, so that only Wine applications use the Tahoma replacement.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Paul Kishimoto wrote:
> @Arne: as you suggested in #29, I researched fontconfig configuration
> files. If I put the attached file in my home directory (as
> ~/.fonts.conf), then Firefox no longer tries to use the Wine Tahoma
> replacement when websites request it. I copied the syntax from an
> example at
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration#Example_1
>
> I disagree with your characterization of this bug. The original text is
> at the top of the page, but you say "The bug here was that the embedded
> bitmaps of Tahoma got used by default, where it's not desired." Those
> things are not equivalent. A better description is "The bug here is that
> Tahoma is installed and used *by the entire desktop*, where it's not
> desired."

My statement was that the original bug report was about the embedded
bitmaps. That has been solved. After that other people hijacked this bug
and made it a whole different issue. This should have been filed as a
separate bug since they are two different things.

And by the way, that the font is used system wide is not a bug, it's
intended behaviour. Therefor if a website requests for Tahoma, you will
see the Tahoma replacement font. Nothing wrong with that!
That you and other users don't like the Tahoma font and want it to be
replaced with something else is a totally different issue.

We could however debate if the Tahoma replacement font was the right
choice, even for Wine, or if we would be better off with the Liberation
fonts, which are metric compatible to the Windows fonts. But that would
also be a mere feature request and not a bug.

It would be a bug if Wine would indeed explicitly depend on the Tahoma
replacement font, IMHO (which should also be filed separately).

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

There is no liberation equivalent of Tahoma as far as I'm aware. That would be an ideal solution.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Is the fact that out-of-the-box Ubuntu lacks anti-aliasing for sites that use Tahoma also a separate issue?

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Eric Appleman wrote:
> Is the fact that out-of-the-box Ubuntu lacks anti-aliasing for sites
> that use Tahoma also a separate issue?
>

Yes, please file a separate bug report, attach a screenshot and describe
how to reproduce the bug (e.g. which websites you visit). Thanks.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

I have reported the separate bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wine1.2/+bug/514493

The comments after "by the way" in #45 reflect a misunderstanding of the user experience, and a lack of attention to what I wrote in #44:
 * I did not express like or dislike of the font. That's not relevant.
 * I did not claim the fontconfig treatment of ttf-tahoma-replacment was not *intended* by the developers/maintainers of those packages.

I simply pointed out that the overall behaviour is *unexpected* (to users), and we can confirm that it is *not advertised* (by, or to, anyone) by looking at the package descriptions.

Indeed, even if users felt that the Tahoma replacement IMPROVED the appearance of some websites, they would STILL be surprised that this change only happened when they installed wine1.2.

Put another way, bugs can arise from software that functions perfectly but ships with configuration that causes confusion in users. This is clearly the case in bug #514493.

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

For Lucid I'm going to fold Tahoma back into being a Wine-specific font unless it improves substantially.

[David Fraser (davidf)]

My comment on comments in #45ཿ
 * "the original bug report was about the embedded bitmaps" - actually the original bug said it "makes sites look ugly in Firefox and other browsers"
 * although the replacement tahoma font works fine for non-bold and bold on LCD monitors, on LCD monitors with sub-pixel antialiasing, there is essentially no difference between normal weight and bold weight.

Please see https://bugs.launchpad.net/baltix/+bug/50529

So although bug 514493 is about restricting tahoma to wine, should we not also be reporting the LCD-bold issue upstream and getting that fixed? Should this have a different bug?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package wine1.2 - 1.1.42-0ubuntu2

---------------
wine1.2 (1.1.42-0ubuntu2) lucid; urgency=low

  * Make embedded tahoma font wine-specifc again [LP: #514493, #412195]
  * Rebuild with new libpng (LP: #554293)
  * Include IT translation for menu items (Sergio Zanchetta)
  * Higher version number to surpass PPA version (LP: #530493)
 -- Scott Ritchie <email address hidden> Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:08:44 -0700

[Kirils Solovjovs (linux-kirils)]

Using karmic.
The wine version is not backported still.
The bug persists. Fixed by removing the font manually.

[David Rahrer (david-rahrer)]

I just installed Lucid and found that the Tahoma replacement isn't working in Firefox. After reading this I see why. Call me odd, but I liked the replacement font and it fixed formatting issues on a number of sites. Is there some way to make this work the way it did in Karmic, ie. before the "fix" in #52? I would like the font system wide, but mainly so it will be used when Tahoma is called for on a website. Thanks.

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

If you want to make it system-wide just copy it from /usr/share/wine/fonts to ~/.fonts or /usr/share/fonts/truetype

[Jaromir Obr (jaromir-obr)]

Just hit a similar issue with "fonts-wine 8.0.1~repack-3ubuntu2" in Ubuntu 23.10.

Text on the web page https://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html is rendered by the font Tahoma and it looks ugly, see https://i.imgur.com/KXC5DYq.png

I uninstalled the package "fonts-wine". Now the font Verdana is used on that page and it looks well, see https://i.imgur.com/P7xO53r.png

I tested it in Chrome and Firefox, with the same result.

[BloodyIron (bloodyiron)]

I have the same issue as Jaromir Obr and I'm about to try to remove the fonts-wine package. But I game heavily so I'm hoping this doesn't break my gaming. It's absurd that such a package would lead to horrible web rendering, and this sure has been a doosie to nail down! Thanks Jaromir for your investigation :)

[BloodyIron (bloodyiron)]

Removing that package "fonts-wine" (not purge) and rebooting, the fonts used by websites (that were known to use the problematic fonts) look actually good now!

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

Debian reverted the change to isolate these low quality fonts from the rest of the system in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=883973, and now this bug is back in Ubuntu 23.10.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

@Jaromir, @Bloodyiron: This bug was closed more than a decade ago. Please don't waste time with adding new comments here.

If you see issues (beyond personal preferences) with fonts-wine, please submit a new bug:

ubuntu-bug wine

[BloodyIron (bloodyiron)]

Re-opening a bug that's of the same nature, how exactly is that unacceptable? The version numbers may be different but it very much is relevant to the topic. It's a regression, from what I read of the situation, which warrants re-opening. Age is not relevant IMO. I do agree with the premise of keeping tidy/clean bug reports and the sort, but that can also include re-opening items due to regression too :^).

Besides, opening a new issue would make it a duplicate from what I can tell ;)

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

On 2023-11-13 18:44, Marius Gedminas wrote:
> Debian reverted the change to isolate these low quality fonts from the
> rest of the system in
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=883973, and now this
> bug is back in Ubuntu 23.10.

Good catch! That Debian bug was filed in 2017, and "the fix" of it was uploaded in Ubuntu here:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wine/8.0.1~repack-2

So: Some users like that the .ttf files in fonts-wine are treated as system fonts, and some users dislike it. If you dislike it, please submit a Debian bug and request that "the fix" of <https://bugs.debian.org/883973> gets reverted. Given the subjective nature of the issue, it would not make sense to change it back in Ubuntu only.

[BloodyIron (bloodyiron)]

I myself honestly don't know what I want in this case. From my perspective the UX was suddenly some web fonts look horrible, and for a long while I had no idea why. It was a lot of work to try and figure out where the problem actually was coming from, and then what on earth to do about it.

So I don't know what more useful feedback to give than that. I can't speculate what my preference could be to any degree that seems useful, I think...