Regression: improper kerning of text

[Steve Magoun]

Sometime during the 13.04 cycle (early March?), tracking/kerning broke for some characters in the Ubuntu font. I've attached a screenshot from the titlebar of Thunderbird - notice the following:

1) in 'ubuntu-recovery' from the top row, notice the extra space between 're' and 'covery'
2) in 'ubuntu-recovery' from the top row, notice the missing whitespace between 'c' and 'o'
3) in 'Canonical' from the top row, notice the missing whitespace between 'c' and 'a'

The attached screenshot is for Thunderbird, but I've observed the same bug in pidgin and LibreOffice in 13.04.

To reproduce:
1) Open a new Libreoffice document
2) Set the font to Ubuntu, 11pt, bold
3) Type in the strings "recovery" and "Canonical"

Expected results:
Characters are kerned properly

Actual results:
Characters are not kerned properly

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: ttf-ubuntu-font-family 0.80-0ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-13.22-generic 3.8.3
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-13-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.9.1-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Mar 18 20:31:42 2013
Dependencies:

InstallationDate: Installed on 2010-09-17 (913 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Beta amd64 (20100901.1)
MarkForUpload: True
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-font-family-sources
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to raring on 2013-01-25 (52 days ago)

[Steve Magoun (smagoun)]

Opening this document in libreoffice in 13.04 *should* show poor kerning (see following screenshot for example of what I see)

[Steve Magoun (smagoun)]

Screenshot showing what I see with the attached libreoffice document in 13.04

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This appears to be partially fixed upstream in freetype 2.4.12, which is now in saucy. In the libreoffice sample document, the only kerning issue that remains is between the v and e; the others all look correct now.