firefox font changed to narrower, less readable font

[João Pinto]

Some sites fonts are much harder to read using Hardy's firefox compared to Gutsy.
I will attach some screnshots

[João Pinto (joaopinto)]

Same page using Ubuntu 8.04

[Aditya Kavoor (adityakavoor)]

I confirm this bug

[Merel (merel469)]

Using Hardy Heron, the fonts on the Dutch Ubuntu forum pages are very weak (faints) and narrower.
Very unpleasant reading such pages or to write text.

Some charachters show horizontal part much thicker as vertical parts. (e.g bottom of number 2).

With the Ubuntu Gutsy I didn't have this problem. Drivers used on Hardy Heron are from nVidia.
On version Gutsy 7.10 , I don't know which drivers were used. It was OK right from installation on.

Tested several resolutions on display, but that does help much.

Writing here in this window shows a charachter font wich is usable, but extremely thin.
The word "Comment" above this window is perfect.

[Merel (merel469)]

I think that this "bug" might be considered as resolved.

See the same subject described on this location :
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+question/30717

As far as I'm concerned , the information given by "msee" was clearing my own problem.

[João Pinto (joaopinto)]

I don't agree that the requirement to change the Font settings after a fresh install to get readable fonts on the browsers is an acceptable resolution. This problem did not exist on Ubunty Gutsy.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:11:51AM -0000, João Pinto wrote:
> Same page using Ubuntu 8.04
>
> ** Attachment added: "Ubuntu 8.04 image"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/13808532/Ubuntu%208.04.png
>

Maybe you have a non-default zoom level for that page? try ctrl-0 or
View-> Zoom Default (or similar)

otherwise its most likely just a different font.

 status incomplete

 - Alexander

[João Pinto (joaopinto)]

This problem is not specific to this page, it affects all pages, it is just more visible on some pages.
I am using the default zoom level.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:02:23AM -0000, João Pinto wrote:
> This problem is not specific to this page, it affects all pages, it is just more visible on some pages.
> I am using the default zoom level.
>
>

A default font issue then

 status incomplete

we need a new home for this

 tag need-reassignment

 - Alexander

[Justin Flavin (justinf)]

i can confirm the Firefox 3 font rendering issue - it makes sites like the following almost unreadable:

http://www.w3schools.com/
http://forums.openx.org

tested on:
Acer PC desktop with Intel 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics
Dell desktop with Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated Graphics Controller

both fresh installs.

Also has occured on my laptop which was an upgrade from Gutsy (no font issues) to Hardy :
HP Pavillion laptop , with nVidia Corporation GeForce 8400M GS

[Justin Flavin (justinf)]

screenshot from Dell desktop with Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated Graphics Controller
fresh 8.04 Hardy install.

[Justin Flavin (justinf)]

fixed issue - thanks to this posting on reddit.com:

http://reddit.com/info/6hfhn/comments/

"After changing the fonts around on Reddit with the (mostly broken) Firebug extension, I narrowed the problem down to Helvetica. According to "fc-match", helvetica was mapping to Nimbus Sans L, which is the default - and also looks awful. DejaVu sans, on the other hand, happens to look great.

To map Helvetica to DejaVu sans instead of Nimbus, simply edit /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf (you'll need sudo) and replace all occurrences of Nimbus Sans L with DejaVu Sans in the XML. Restart Firefox and you'll be good to go."

i did this, restarted the Dell desktop and i no longer have poor font rendering in Firefox 3.

[Justin Flavin (justinf)]

also, change all occurences of Liberation Sans to DejaVu Sans as well, as Liberation Sans is mapped to Arial. This will help with the rendering of websites that use the Arial font.

[Philipp Kern (pkern)]

Helvetica is indeed screwed in firefox-3.0 after a fresh install of Ubuntu Hardy.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

arne, could you take a look if we can map Helvetica to a better font by default? See: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/220568/comments/13

Thanks!

[mihai.ile (mihai.ile)]

GREAT!!!

Thank you so much Justin Flavin for the fix.
I replaced all occurrences as said in post above and now Firefox 3 rendering in hardy is simply superb!

I hope this will also be fixed for next Ubuntu release

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

The mapping from Helvetica to Nimbus Sans L is there for a reason: metric compatibility. This means documents set in Helvetica but opened in OpenOffice or any other word processor will still have more or less the same layout. DejaVu Sans is *not* metric compatible, neither with Helvetica, nor with Arial. Therefor a substitution in favor of DejaVu Sans would screw up page layouts for documents set in Helvetica or Arial. Since the fontconfig settings affect all applications on the desktop, this change needs to be very well thought over.

And I can say that I won't endorse that change on system level. If a user wants to do it on his system, fine. But the proper way to do it would be:

cat /etc/fonts/conf.avail/30-metric-aliases.conf >> ~/.fonts.conf

Then edit ~/.fonts.conf and do the changes there. That way the changes will be preserved during an upgrade of fontconfig.

[Philipp Kern (pkern)]

Arne, please consider that the status quo are barely readable web pages. I'm not opposed against a sensible font mapping, but the result needs to be readable, too, not "only" metric compatible.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

@Philipp:

1. if we change the default settings in favor of DejaVu Sans, then I can guarantee you that many other users will file bugs against this change, because of metric incompatibility. Happened already before, I know what I'm talking about.

2. The webpages are clearly readable to me. I agree that the letters are a bit narrow and small, but zooming in helps in that case. Otherwise you can also increase the dpi setting for your screen or complain to the webmasters why they enforce such a small font size.

3. If you want to use sans-serif (which defaults to DejaVu Sans) as default font, then you can do the settings in Edit/Preferences/Advanced and uncheck the box "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above".

This bug is clearly a user preference setting and should be handled like that! Please refrain from demanding a system wide change in the packages unless that change would benefit *all* desktop applications and users. This request is definitely *not* one of those!

What would be possible, IMHO, would be to disable the "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" setting in a clean default installation of firefox. (I'm not sure what is the current default setting, as I have modified my personal settings quite a bit).

[João Pinto (joaopinto)]

The "Allow pages to choose their own fonts" is enabled on a default install, my resolution was to disabled it.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 08:37:00AM -0000, João Pinto wrote:
> The "Allow pages to choose their own fonts" is enabled on a default
> install, my resolution was to disabled it.
>

Anyone can confirm that this fixes the issue?

 - Alexander

[Dave Stroud (bigdavesr)]

I have tried some some of solutions mentioned here and none of them work. It depends on the website set up. Yahoo mail is the worst for me. They have so much junk that they want you to see more than they want you to see your email. I can increase the zoom so I can read my mail, and go to next email and it reajust back to small font G mail on the otherhand does not have the same problem. It stays wherever you put it Dosent have all the junk. The problem is not fixed.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

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Alexander Sack wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 08:37:00AM -0000, João Pinto wrote:
>> The "Allow pages to choose their own fonts" is enabled on a default
>> install, my resolution was to disabled it.
>>
>
> Anyone can confirm that this fixes the issue?
>
Works for me.

Cheers
Arne
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[Dave Stroud (bigdavesr)]

Thats the first thing I did and I confirm that did not fix the poblem.

[yct (juraj-vitko)]

Hi, I understand the source of this issue is to avoid patent infringement. (if i'm not mistaken, the FF3/cairo problem)

However, may I suggest one change: After the user installs msstcorefonts (Microsoft fonts package), could the "Arial" font be automatically used for the "Helvetica" name?

Currently, "Helvetica" simply stays mapped to the "Nimbus Sans L", altough "Arial" perhaps is a closer match.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Helvarial.png

[Michael Blakeley (mike+ubuntu)]

This problem is still in intrepid, and seems tricky to resolve (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=299697 is somewhat relevant).

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-804242.html also suggests an interesting approach, using FONTCONFIG_FILE and a firefox-specific font configuration. I gave up before getting it to work, but this seems like a somewhat elegant way to reconcile the demands of different applications. Perhaps the firefox packagers could look into something like this?

Even if you don't personally care about matching Helvetica's metrics, customizing this behavior via $HOME/.fonts.conf is difficult because 30-metric-aliases.conf is loaded before $HOME/.fonts.conf. That seems broken to me, but here's a hack to work around that issue ("assign_replace") that works well enough for me. If there's a better way, I'd love to know about it.

Paste this XML into a new $HOME/.fonts.conf, or integrate it with your existing one. I chose to use msttcorefonts - you can choose fonts from DejaVu etc if you prefer.

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
 <!-- http://forums.bsdnexus.com/viewtopic.php?pid=12222 -->
 <!-- assign_replace overrides /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf -->
 <match target="pattern">
   <test name="family">
     <string>Helvetica</string>
   </test>
   <edit name="family" mode="assign_replace">
     <string>Arial</string>
   </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="pattern">
   <test qual="any" name="family">
     <string>Times</string>
   </test>
   <edit name="family" mode="assign_replace">
     <string>Times New Roman</string>
   </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="pattern">
   <test qual="any" name="family">
     <string>Courier</string>
   </test>
   <edit name="family" mode="assign_replace">
     <string>Courier New</string>
   </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

[Ivan N. Zlatev (e-contact-i-nz-net)]

Out of the box Firefox Fonts are absolutely horrible. This was a critical issue and a "deal breaker" for me so I ended up not installing Ubuntu.

Isn't this bug supposed to be at least Major? The Web Browsing experience is fairly important...

[marbertone (marbertone-deactivatedaccount)]

Happens also in Maverick. Exactly also in the box in which I'm now writing this text.

[marbertone (marbertone-deactivatedaccount)]

p.s.
it happened also just after installing Wine!

[Ahmad Syukri Abdollah (syockit)]

Will someone confirm the status of this bug as of Lucid and Natty?

[Marcus Haslam (marcus-haslam)]

I'm out of the office until 1st August.

On 7 May 2011, at 20:12, Ahmad Syukri <email address hidden> wrote:

> Will someone confirm the status of this bug as of Lucid and Natty?
>
> ** Also affects: hundredpapercuts
>   Importance: Undecided
>       Status: New
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of
> Papercutters, which is subscribed to One Hundred Paper Cuts.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/220568
>
> Title:
>  firefox font changed to narrower, less readable font
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
>  New
> Status in “fontconfig” package in Ubuntu:
>  Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
>  Some sites fonts are much harder to read using Hardy's firefox
> compared to Gutsy.
>  I will attach some screnshots

[Ahmed Shams (ashams)]

Hello Everyone,
Would you please confirm if it still exist in the latest stable release?

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Since it's been a while since the last activity, and that was a request for confirmation of the existence of this bug on the lastest stable release to which there has been no response, I'm closing this bug.