Text spacing increases when using CSS3 @font-face

[Andrew Anderson]

Binary package hint: chromium-browser

I've set up a test to demonstrate the problem.

This page uses a normal font-family of "DejaVu Sans" (you'll need to have that font installed in order for the comparison to work):
http://www.unfinishedblog.org/test/font-normal.html

This page uses the same exact font, loaded via the CSS3 @font-face element:
http://www.unfinishedblog.org/test/font-css3.html

On my machine at least, the text is inexplicably much more spaced out in the @font-face version. Firefox and Epiphany (which also uses Webkit) render both pages identically.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: chromium-browser 5.0.375.38~r46659-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.36-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Jun 16 09:00:12 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: chromium-browser

[Adam Langley (agl-chromium)]

Bitstream Charter, as donated to the X Consortium, was a Type1 font. Your @font-face is a TTF and likely to be very different; it's no surprise that the appearance would change.

[Andrew Anderson (andmatand)]

You are correct that the font was originally a type1 font, however I have converted it to ttf (with http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator) and I know this conversion is not changing the metrics because Firefox and Epiphany both render both versions identically, as I have already stated =)

And to be absolutely sure, I just changed the test pages to use "DejaVu Sans", which is normally a truetype font, so I have done no conversion. The bug is still present.

[Adam Langley (agl-chromium)]

Then you probably have a mismatch with fontconfig and XSETTINGS.

When loading "DejaVu Sans", Chromium will pay attention to the fontconfig settings (try `fc-match -v "DejaVu Sans"` and look at the hinting, hintlevel settings, among others). However, when loading a TTF from the network, there's no fontconfig information, so the XSETTINGS values will be used.

Hinting can move the glyph control points, altering the advance width. If you think that your hinting settings really do match then please include screenshots.

[dino99 (9d9)]

Closing that outdated report as EOL has been reached long time ago