Hebrew Vowels Incorrectly Placed in Firefox

[Max Preston]

Binary package hint: firefox

Viewing any webpage written in Hebrew with vowels (e.g. http://www.hebrewtoday.com/) the vowels are placed between the letters rather than underneath the letters. The vowels should be displayed centered under the letter immediately preceding it (RTL). Hebrew without vowels is displayed correctly (e.g. http://lang.rice.edu/baron/Texts_html/Text03.htm).

[Nhottanscp (nhottanscp)]

Reassign to ftang.

[Ftang (ftang)]

katakai- it looks like GTK hebrew rendering issue. Can you take a look at it?

[Masaki-katakai-test (masaki-katakai-test)]

Prabhat, can you take this?

[Arthur-barrett (arthur-barrett)]

<email address hidden> (Simon Montagu) on the
netscape.public.mozilla.i18n newsgroup posted this

>
>= http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60546, right?
>

I dont personally agree, I think from the comments on 60546 that it is windows
specific wheras this bug is on Sun/Solaris.

[Prabhat-hegde (prabhat-hegde)]

masaki, please assign it to me (am not able to reassign it to myself)
prabhat.

[Masaki-katakai-test (masaki-katakai-test)]

Assign to <email address hidden>.

[Andreasb-formerly-netscape (andreasb-formerly-netscape)]

Changing QA contact to <email address hidden>.

Changing component to "Bidi..." and adding intl keyword.

Gilad, can you confirm (reproduce) this problem? Thanks.

[Verbal-myrealbox (verbal-myrealbox)]

Marking NEW.

[Smontagu (smontagu)]

Copied from n.p.m.i18n:

In spite of their otherwise good BIDI support, Mozilla 0.9.1 and 0.9.2
as well as the nightly build as of yesterday fail to display Hebrew
diacritics in correct positions above letters if the CSS property
TEXT-ALIGN is set to the value JUSTIFY, whether internally or
externally, for an inline element containing the combination of
Hebrew letters and diacritics. It took me a while to pin down this
as the environment of the buggy display.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Tsuguya Sasaki, PhD
E-mail: <email address hidden>
WWW: http://www2.gol.com/users/tsuguya/
----------------------------------------------------------------

[Arthur-barrett (arthur-barrett)]

I'd attatch a sample of what Tsuguya is talking about, but Bugzilla currently
wont let me.

You can see it at http://mail.hlmm.com.au/diacritics.html

If you have problems with this URL - contact me direct.

[Ftang (ftang)]

Is this a Unix only problem. Can we reproduce the same problem on window?

[Zach-zachlipton (zach-zachlipton)]

Mass-move all BiDi Hebrew and Arabic qa to me, <email address hidden>.
Thank you Gilad for your service to this component, and best of luck to you
in the future.

Sholom.

[Smontagu (smontagu)]

*** Bug 117776 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Ftang (ftang)]

not really sure bug 117776 is a dup of this one.
simon, can you put down a simplier test case for me ? (and attached to the bug)
reassign back to ftang

[Zach-zachlipton (zach-zachlipton)]

reassign to smontagu as per ftang's comment

[Smontagu (smontagu)]

Created attachment 63555
Simple Hebrew and Arabic testcase

[Smontagu (smontagu)]

Created attachment 63557
Correct display of attachment 63555

[Zsigri (zsigri)]

Related to Bug 60546?

[Jonadab (jonadab)]

Problem is not specific to Sun hardware, nor to Solaris per se; I'm getting
exactly the same thing here on Mandrake 9.2 on x86. All nikkud pointings in
rtl text display to the left of their consonants. This includes not just
vowels but also other marks, such as dagesh and accent marks. I am not
sufficiently empowered to change the hardware field from Sun to All, but I
can confirm the issue on Linux/x86, with Firefox 0.9.3.

See also this Wikipedia article, which can serve as a testcase and also
has notes on where the marks should be positioned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niqqud

[Mozilla-alon (mozilla-alon)]

updated per comment 19

[ihamsa (i-hamsa)]

Still here in Firefox 1.0 on Linux/x86. Please note that Qt renders nikkud
(nearly) correctly even in simple text fields. Is there a way to borrow their
ideas without license contamination?

Perhaps a related issue is that some combining diacritics are rendered over the
following character, instead of the preceding one. E.g. U+0300, U+0301, U+0304
are displayed incorrectly, while U+0302 and U+0304 are OK.

[ihamsa (i-hamsa)]

Please please please FIXIT! This begins to look embarrassing! It's year 2006 now and the bug is open since 2001.

Mozilla and Firefox are two graphical application on my Linux desktop that doesn't display nikkud correctly. Most GTK and Qt application are able to do that.

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

I believe this is the same bug, or a near cognate:

In Linux, but not in Windows, Firefox displays Arabic short vowels "between" consonants instead of "over" them.

Using "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060714 Firefox/1.5.0.5 - Build ID: 2006071404"

See the Arabic part of the heading of http://users.belgacom.net/antoine.mechelynck/ as an example. (With recent Fx builds I get it every time under Linux, never under W32. Just browse to the above URI to see it.)

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

(In reply to comment #23)
> I believe this is the same bug, or a near cognate:
>
> In Linux, but not in Windows, Firefox displays Arabic short vowels "between"
> consonants instead of "over" them.
>
> Using "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060714
> Firefox/1.5.0.5 - Build ID: 2006071404"
>
> See the Arabic part of the heading of
> http://users.belgacom.net/antoine.mechelynck/ as an example. (With recent Fx
> builds I get it every time under Linux, never under W32. Just browse to the
> above URI to see it.)
>

Oops! Wrong URI! http://users.skynet.be/antoine.mechelynck/ is the right one. (but the wrong one has a <meta> to load the right one anyway.)

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

Created attachment 253243
testcase for Arabic (look at the Arabic text left of the photo)

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

Created attachment 253246
screen capture of attachment 253243 in Firefox (bad)

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

Created attachment 253247
screen capture of attachment 253243 in Konqueror (good)

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

(In reply to comment #25)
> Created an attachment (id=253243) [details]
> testcase for Arabic (look at the Arabic text left of the photo)
>

Note: some images are missing but what matters is the text. I intentionally added both "good" and "bad" screenshots so people can compare regardless of how their version of Gecko renders it on their platform.

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

Created attachment 253253
shorter version of attachment 253243, omitting a lot of irrelevant text

[Smontagu (smontagu)]

(In reply to comment #23)
> In Linux, but not in Windows, Firefox displays Arabic short vowels "between"
> consonants instead of "over" them.

This will be solved in Firefox 3 for all versions. Meanwhile you may be able to use a version of Firefox with Pango enabled. See http://sinhala.linux.lk/enabling-pango-in-firefox-to-enable-sinhala

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

(In reply to comment #30)
> (In reply to comment #23)
> > In Linux, but not in Windows, Firefox displays Arabic short vowels "between"
> > consonants instead of "over" them.
>
> This will be solved in Firefox 3 for all versions.

I'll be overjoyed when this bug is fixed, even if only in Gecko 1.9, but I'll believe it when I see it in a Sm trunk nightly.

> Meanwhile you may be able to
> use a version of Firefox with Pango enabled. See
> http://sinhala.linux.lk/enabling-pango-in-firefox-to-enable-sinhala
>

That page applies only to Fedora and Ubuntu distributions of Firefox. I use Mozilla distributions of both Fx2 (Gecko 1.8+) and SeaMonkey (Gecko 1.9a), as downloaded straight from ftp.mozilla.org, currently the following:

"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2pre) Gecko/20070131 BonEcho/2.0.0.2pre" - Build ID: 2007013104
Configure arguments: --enable-application=browser --enable-update-channel=nightly --enable-update-packaging --disable-debug '--enable-optimize=-Os -freorder-blocks -fno-reorder-functions -gstabs+' --disable-tests --enable-default-toolkit=gtk2 --enable-xft --disable-freetype2 --enable-svg --enable-canvas --enable-static --disable-shared

"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a2pre) Gecko/20070131 SeaMonkey/1.5a" - Build ID: 2007013101
Configure arguments: --enable-application=suite --disable-tests --enable-extensions=default,tasks --without-system-nspr --without-system-jpeg --without-system-zlib --without-system-png --without-system-mng --disable-debug '--enable-optimize=-O2 -gstabs+' --enable-crypto --enable-default-toolkit=gtk2 --enable-xft --disable-freetype2 --disable-xprint --disable-canvas --disable-svg

Both of them exhibit the bug, both with MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO unset and with MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0 . Any ideas?

[Neil-httl (neil-httl)]

As of today new SeaMonkey builds should be produced with the following config:
'--enable-optimize=-O2 -gstabs+' --enable-canvas --enable-svg --enable-pango --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk2

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

(In reply to comment #32)
> As of today new SeaMonkey builds should be produced with the following config:
> '--enable-optimize=-O2 -gstabs+' --enable-canvas --enable-svg --enable-pango
> --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk2
>

New as of today:

seamonkey-installer-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Let's try to unpack the non-installer .tar.bz2: unpacking works, but:
/usr/local/seamonkey/seamonkey-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

rpm -qa |grep stdc
libstdc++-3.3.5-5
libstdc++-devel-3.3.5-5

On Novell-SUSE Linux Professional 9.3

Do you think I should open a new bug?

[Smontagu (smontagu)]

(In reply to comment #33)
Yes, that certainly merits opening a new bug.

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

(In reply to comment #34)
> (In reply to comment #33)
> Yes, that certainly merits opening a new bug.
>

Done: bug 368990

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

(In reply to comment #35)
> (In reply to comment #34)
> > (In reply to comment #33)
> > Yes, that certainly merits opening a new bug.
> >
>
> Done: bug 368990
>

Resolved WONTFIX by bsmedberg. "Upgrade to SuSE 10 or stay with the old malfunctioning January version of SeaMonkey."

[Smontagu (smontagu)]

Right now there are two serious regressions that make Arabic unreadable on trunk builds: bug 369198, which has a patch awaiting review, and bug 368996.

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

I have finally succeeded to upgrade to openSUSE 10.2. "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a3pre) Gecko/20070210 SeaMonkey/1.5a" (Build ID: 2007021001), a Cairo build, does not exhibit this bug; but it suffers from bug 368996 on Arabic text in some (not all) fonts invoked by CSS and present on the system.

[Max Preston (max-preston)]

Binary package hint: firefox

Viewing any webpage written in Hebrew with vowels (e.g. http://www.hebrewtoday.com/) the vowels are placed between the letters rather than underneath the letters. The vowels should be displayed centered under the letter immediately preceding it (RTL). Hebrew without vowels is displayed correctly (e.g. http://lang.rice.edu/baron/Texts_html/Text03.htm).

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

What version of ubuntu and what version of firefox are you using?

Tagged as needtesterr

[Max Preston (max-preston)]

When I reported the bug I was in Edgy and I'm not sure which version of firefox. I've since updated and am now in stable Feisty and using the Ubuntu version of firefox 2.0.0.3. The bug still exists here. Note also that the Hebrew vowels in firefox on Windows are displayed correctly. Thanks

[Ori Avtalion (salty-horse)]

According to <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=81367#c30>, this will be fixed in Firefox 3.0

[Hilario J. Montoliu (hjmf) (hmontoliu)]

Thank you Ori Avtalion,

Set status "in progress" according to upstream's status.

[Saša Bodiroža (jazzva)]

Removed tags, as it's In progress.

[Sergey Romanov (sml-uni)]

The problem isn't limited to Firefox only, nor to applications that use pango (like Firefox and Abiword do). E.g. Opera, which I believe doesn't use pango, exibits the same behaviour. It's due to some complex interaction between the used font and application, so with some unlucky combinations of font and software it is much more pronounced. Ironically, the otherwise very high quality Microsoft Core Web Fonts deliver here some of the ugliest displays. I mean specifically the somewhat dated versions of these fonts from msttcorefonts, which are the only ones that are freely redistributable. When I replaced this version of Arial with that from Windows XP, the results were much better.

This was described in detail here:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=115609793729861&w=2

By now, I use Konqueror on the sites that display Hebrew or Arabic vowels.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 04:23:29PM -0000, Sergey Romanov wrote:
>
> The problem isn't limited to Firefox only, nor to applications that use pango (like Firefox and Abiword do). E.g. Opera, which I believe doesn't use pango, exibits the same behaviour. It's due to some complex interaction between the used font and application, so with some unlucky combinations of font and software it is much more pronounced. Ironically, the otherwise very high quality Microsoft Core Web Fonts deliver here some of the ugliest displays. I mean specifically the somewhat dated versions of these fonts from msttcorefonts, which are the only ones that are freely redistributable. When I replaced this version of Arial with that from Windows XP, the results were much better.
>
> This was described in detail here:
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=115609793729861&w=2
>
> By now, I use Konqueror on the sites that display Hebrew or Arabic
> vowels.
>

Is this a font issue? Maybe you miss a font package?

Please try firefox-3.0 package in hardy and see if it renders your
cases better.

 affects ubuntu/firefox
 status incomplete

 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status incomplete

 - Alexander

[Max Preston (max-preston)]

Just an update: In Gutsy, this error is fixed. In firefox in Feisty, Pango was enabled by default (or maybe disabled by default?). Regardless, the default setting for Pango was switched in Gutsy and now the vowels display correctly.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 05:42:42AM -0000, Max Preston wrote:
> Just an update: In Gutsy, this error is fixed. In firefox in Feisty,
> Pango was enabled by default (or maybe disabled by default?).
> Regardless, the default setting for Pango was switched in Gutsy and now
> the vowels display correctly.
>

Thanks for the info.

 affects ubuntu/firefox
 status fixreleased

 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status fixreleased

 - Alexander

[Ori Avtalion (salty-horse)]

The original bug described has been fixed.
All of the bugs reported in the comments, except bug 368996, have also been fixed.

Is this a meta bug? Shouldn't it be closed?