FreeSerif should not be default Serif font

[Mehdi Hassanpour]

FreeSerif is the default Serif font in Firefox & epiphany on Karmic, this font has unreadable glyphs for Persian and maybe other nonlatin languages...
Jaunty didn't have this bug.

pmap grep ttf for firefox in Jaunty CD is:

b2285000 316 - - - r---- DejaVuSansMono.ttf
b2419000 300 - - - r---- DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf
b24be000 560 - - - r---- DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf
b4051000 324 - - - r---- DejaVuSerif.ttf
b48eb000 608 - - - r---- DejaVuSans.ttf

and pmap grep ttf for firefox in Karmic CD is:

aebc7000 1252 - - - r---- FreeSerif.ttf
b5628000 300 - - - r---- DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf
b5673000 560 - - - r---- DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf
b60ad000 324 - - - r---- DejaVuSerif.ttf
b723a000 608 - - - r---- DejaVuSans.ttf

Screenshot for Jaunty which looks fine: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/34758919/Screenshot-Jaunty.png
Screenshot for Karmic which is unreadable: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/34759310/Screenshot-Karmic.png

[Adi Roiban (adiroiban)]

From what I see in both Jaunty and Karmic the language-support-fonts-fa depends on ttf-farsiweb and ttf-sil-scheherazade

Also it looks like Nazli font is shiped with ttf-farsiweb

Basicaly, from the point of view of Persian language support there were no changes between Jaunty and Karmic.

Maybe there is a problem with default fonts configuration in GNOME or Firefox.

I have assigned the Ubuntu Persian Translation team. Please advice with this problem.

Thanks!

[Mehdi Hassanpour (mehdi)]

I spent some time on the issue today, yes Adi you're right I was testing with a Jaunty DVD which has different packages than the CD version!

pmap grep ttf for firefox in Jaunty CD is:

b2285000 316 - - - r---- DejaVuSansMono.ttf
b2419000 300 - - - r---- DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf
b24be000 560 - - - r---- DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf
b4051000 324 - - - r---- DejaVuSerif.ttf
b48eb000 608 - - - r---- DejaVuSans.ttf

and pmap grep ttf for firefox in Karmic CD is:

aebc7000 1252 - - - r---- FreeSerif.ttf
b5628000 300 - - - r---- DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf
b5673000 560 - - - r---- DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf
b60ad000 324 - - - r---- DejaVuSerif.ttf
b723a000 608 - - - r---- DejaVuSans.ttf

So, the easy workaround for me was removing freefont folder or the ttf-freefont package... You any ideas why FF uses FreeSerif on karmic?

[Mehdi Hassanpour (mehdi)]

ttf-freefont has dependency with some other packages... so I just deleted "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/" folder and fonts look good now...

[Adi Roiban (adiroiban)]

ttt-freefont is part of ubuntu-desktop metapackage.

Have you encountered similar problems with other applications from Ubuntu ?

Have you tried accessing that page with other browsers like epiphany or chromium ?

We should find out if this is a Firefox or a generic problem.

Maybe you can contact Behdad Esfahbod and ask him for help.

I am not very familiar with perso-arabic script.

[Mehdi Hassanpour (mehdi)]

epiphany looks like firefox so it has the same issue but chromium looked fine. seems to be a Gecko bug...

[BehdadEsfahbod (behdad)]

What about gedit? What about:

$ fc-match "sans:lang=fa"
$ fc-match "serif:lang=fa"

[Mehdi Hassanpour (mehdi)]

Hi Behdad, This should not be a gnome bug! gedit looks fine and:

If ttf-farsiweb is not installed:

$ fc-match "sans:lang=fa"
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"

$ fc-match "serif:lang=fa"
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"

If ttf-farsiweb is installed:

$ fc-match "sans:lang=fa"
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"

$ fc-match "serif:lang=fa"
nazli.ttf: "Nazli" "Regular"

[BehdadEsfahbod (behdad)]

You don't have FreeSans in your firefox font configuration by any chance, do you?
I have no idea what change may be causing this. Was freesans also installed on the system that is acting properly?

[Mehdi Hassanpour (mehdi)]

pmap results I sent earlier are from 9.04 live CD and 9.10 live CD under VM so all configurations are default and there is no FreeSans/FreeSerif in firefox font configuration as I can see.
ttf-freefont is installed on both 9.04 and 9.10 by default! but Ubuntu 9.04 FF does not use FreeSerif.

[BehdadEsfahbod (behdad)]

Time to report to Firefox maybe.

[Usama Akkad (damascene)]

the same issue with Arabic language
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/539103

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Task should never have been assigned to Firefox project.

[Usama Akkad (damascene)]

I've noticed that the DejaVu Serif font have the exact same issue. so I wonder if serif is a good choice at all in it's Arabic version.

I'll report a bug against this with detailed information after asking the translation team if God wills

[Qianqian Fang (fangq)]

For Chinese (or CJK) users, Firefox's choice to use serif as the default font is also questionable. Not only because it is inconsistent to the default font style for desktop (i.e. sans-serif), but also the non-optimal rendering performance of the existing serif CJK fonts (Song/Ming styles). Most users don't care the font categories when browsing web pages, but prefer consistency and clarity for on-screen use.

Perhaps someone should file a bug to Firefox upstream directly.

[Usama Akkad (damascene)]

reported a bug against freeserif it self
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ttf-freefont/+bug/540042

I hope that it got replaced as a default in firefox till it gets ready in it's non-latin version

[Mohamed Amine Ilidrissi (ilidrissi.amine)]

Do you still experiment problems with non-latin FreeSerif? Please respond if you do.

[Usama Akkad (damascene)]

I do

[Mohamed Amine Ilidrissi (ilidrissi.amine)]

Can you try Maverick, so we can see if the issue hasn't been fixed yet?

[Steve White (stevan-white)]

Ahem! Pardon me!

Is there a problem with FreeFont or not?

Why hasn't anybody pushed this upstream????

If there is a problem, the FreeFont maintainers should be informed.
I can personally assure you, all efforts will be made to improve things.
However, we have not heard of this problem at all!

Please post any FreeFont bugs on
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=freefont

Maintainers:
It is not my business to check the bug lists of distributions for bugs relating to FreeFont.
If there is a real problem, please inform upstream!!!