Menu item mnemonics do not appear on characters with descenders

[Eric Gregory]

Mnemonics in menu items work -- but do not show up -- under characters that contain a descender (i.e. lower-case y or upper-case Q.)

The problem can be reproduced in Gedit, Calculator, Mines, Shotwell, and probably many others as well. It occurs regardless of theme, but it's specific to the new Ubuntu font. The bug will *not* reproduce with other fonts.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: ttf-ubuntu-font-family 0.69+ufl-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.35-genusername 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Nov 16 16:35:16 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-font-family-sources

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Hello Eric,

On the system that I have here, the Gtk+ menu accelerator underlines (eg. gnome-terminal) only appear when the Alt key has been pressed (pressing and holding the Alt key should cause the short underlines to appear).

Is this what you're referring to? Please could you also provide two screenshots showing the issue with, and without the Alt key pressed. And if you believe this is specifically related to the Ubuntu Font Family (rather than a theme), please could you provide screenshots showing another font where the behaviour is different.

[Eric Gregory (eric-yorba)]

I've added three screenshots showing the bug. In the first one (#3), you can see Calculator in the Ambience theme without the alt key pressed. No mnemonics appear, as expected.

In the second one and third screenshots (#4 and #5) you can see mnemonics for every item except for Quit.

Let me know if any other screenshots are needed.

[Eric Gregory (eric-yorba)]

Two more facets of this bug:

* The bug reproduces at certain font sizes but not others: font sizes 11 and 15 have the issue, but 12 does not.

* The bug does not occur in Firefox. I'm assuming the way Firefox draws its menus is different anyway, since the mnemonics always appear.

[Eric Gregory (eric-yorba)]

Here's a screenshot on the same system where the font size is set to 12, and the bug no longer reproduced.

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

I can confirm this issue (ambiance Theme, font size 10)

[John Marter (gjmarter)]

A great example of this problem is in the font tab of the Appearances panel. The p in the subpixel smoothing option should be underlined.

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

I'd say this was a bug in gtk+2, it's not reproducible in gtk+3 and I doubt the font has something causing the bug.

[Adam Dingle (adam-yorba)]

I agree that this seems to be solved now. On 13.04, I can clearly see an underline under the mnemonic Q for File->Quit in gedit, for example.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gtk+2.0 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]