Ubuntu
firefox package

<html lang="..."> attribute breaks dashes

Bug #2012430 reported by Kevin Wilke
12
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
firefox (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned
Focal
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned
Jammy
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

The attached HTML file should be rendered as two lines of text, one with dashes between the words and one with spaces. However, Firefox renders the file with no dashes whatsoever. Instead of dashes, it shows double-width spaces.

The HTML renders correctly if lang="de-x-formal" attribute is changed to lang="de". Please note that de-x-formal is a valid language code, as verified with http://schneegans.de/lv/ and it is found in the HTML generated by MediaWiki when the language is set to de-formal.

I also noticed that the extra wide spaces Firefox incorrectly shows instead of dashes are in the ori1Uni font while the regular letters are in DejaVu Serif. With lang="de", everything is in DejaVu Serif, including dashes which render correctly.

This problem does not occur with Chromium on Ubuntu, nor with Firefox on Debian, nor Firefox on Windows.

Ubuntu version: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS
Firefox version: firefox 111.0-2 from snap

Thank you very much for looking into this.

Tags: html rendering
Revision history for this message
Kevin Wilke (kwilke) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Kevin Wilke (kwilke) wrote :

Here is an example of a website where this bug causes dashes not to show:

https://www.dontexist.de/

Firefox on Ubuntu incorrectly renders "MediaWiki-Startseite" as "MediaWiki Startseite". Other browsers and Firefox on other OSes correctly render "MediaWiki-Startseite".

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

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

Changed in firefox (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Karsten Hoffmeyer (kghbln) wrote (last edit ):

This issue has been a pain in the you know what for me, for quite some time now. I was not sure if it is MediaWiki or Firefox. Since I only use Mint on all my clients, they were consistently broken. Over the years I have gotten used to working with invisible dashes but it is not a nice experience to be honest.

It will be really cool to get a fix for this.

Happened and happens to me for Mint building up on Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04. and 22.04.

Revision history for this message
Kevin Wilke (kwilke) wrote :

This bug must have been introduced between Ubuntu 18.04 and 18.10.

It doesn't happen with Ubuntu 18.04 which shipped with Firefox 59. It first appeared in Ubuntu 18.10 which comes with Firefox 63.

Revision history for this message
Amin Bandali (bandali) wrote :

Hello, and sorry for the slow reply here.

I just tried, and I could reproduce the bug with Firefox 128 deb package on Ubuntu 20.04 and Firefox 128 snap package on Ubuntu 22.04, but Firefox 128 snap on Ubuntu 24.04 seems to render it correctly. Would you be able to verify this?

Since the issue happens on older Ubuntu releases but not the latest one, I'm inclined to think that it may be an issue with one of the lower level system libraries that Firefox interacts with. Still, it may be worth opening a bug report about this on Mozilla's tracker at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org as well. Would you please do that if not yet already, and provide the bug number here so I could add it to this bug's metadata? Thanks.

Revision history for this message
Kevin Wilke (kwilke) wrote :

Thanks for your response. I can confirm that the problem does not happen with Ubuntu 24.04. It does happen with 23.10.1 and below.

I'm not sure about filing a bug report with Mozilla. I think they'll blame it on the Ubuntu modifications because the bug doesn't happen on any version of Debian, only Ubuntu and derivatives. I'm glad it's fixed, though.

Revision history for this message
Amin Bandali (bandali) wrote :

Cheers, and thank you for your reply and confirmation.

Actually, it would still be helpful to file a bug report with Mozilla and I'd like to ask that you consider doing so, because the Firefox snap shipped in Ubuntu is maintained in collaboration with Mozilla and has little changes/patches beyond what Mozilla ships, and if bringing this bug to the attention of Mozilla folks may result in it being fixed for earlier currently-supported releases of Ubuntu as well, that would be a great outcome for users of those releases of Ubuntu and derivatives.

Thank you again.

Changed in firefox (Ubuntu Focal):
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in firefox (Ubuntu Jammy):
status: New → Confirmed
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.
Subscribing...

Other bug subscribers

Bug attachments

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.