Hebrew vowel diacritics are completely broken

[Amir E. Aharoni]

It seems that Ubuntu 11.10 introduced the Ubuntu font for Hebrew. It is too early. The display of the Hebrew vowel diacritics (niqqud) is completely broken and they make the font unusable.

Maybe the font designers thought that they are not important, because they are used rarely, but this is a grave mistake. These vowel diacritics are used more often than some people think. They are relatively rarely used in emails, but they are used in the Hebrew Wikipedia for indicating the pronunciation of foreign names. And since Ubuntu is used as the default Hebrew fon in Firefox, foreign names in the Hebrew Wikipedia are broken.

They are also used in poetry and Bible, so now if children want to use Ubuntu to study for their literature classes, they cannot do it.

This must be fixed urgently. If the font designers cannot fix the vowel diacritics, the default sans-serif font must be reverted to the older one.

[Shahar Or (mightyiam)]

It seems fine in my system. At least in Wikipedia.

But I haven't checked what font is being actually used.

Screen shot attached.

[Amir E. Aharoni (amir-aharoni)]

Try this:
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/מריו_פרניולה

(In case the URL doesn't work, it's מריו פרניולה.)

The Holam point is supposed to be above Vav, not to the left of it. The Dagesh point in Pe and Yud is hardly visible.

See also the article חולם (Holam).

[Shahar Or (mightyiam)]

Ok, I see what you mean now.

The diacritics need urgent adjustment.

It is readable in one word. In a whole sentence or more it would be a big readability problem.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Amir: Ubuntu 11.10 does not ship with Ubuntu Hebrew.

Please could you attach a screenshot of what you're seeing.

[Yaron (sh-yaron)]

So its a fallback font?
Can you recognize which one is it?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Looks like DejaVu Sans Bold. Does the attached PDF and highlighting look like a match for you? If so we can repoint the bug there?

[Shahar Or (mightyiam)]

Yes, the PDF displays the issue. You see those diacritics above the letter ו ? They should be directly above it. Also the diacritic thats to the left of the letter י should not be connected to it like it appears but a little apart.

[Amir E. Aharoni (amir-aharoni)]

It's not the Ubuntu font. My bad. Totally my bad. I really should have checked it better.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Thanks all. Needs sending upstream.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.