FS#6087 - ttf-dejavu bug in Firefox (DejaVu Sans)

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Alberto Gonzalez (Luis) - Tuesday, 26 December 2006, 22:26 GMT
Last edited by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Sunday, 22 June 2008, 00:11 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Jan de Groot (JGC)
Alexander Baldeck (kth5)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version 0.7.2 Gimmick
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 3
Private No

Details

After upgrading ttf-dejavu to the latest 2.13 version I have a strange problem with fonts in Firefox. Whenever a page has a word containing "ffe" the second "f" and the "e" are overlapped. This happens only if there is a 'align="justify"' tag, though. And it happens only in Firefox (not in Konqueror or other KDE apps).

To reproduce, open the attached file in Firefox (I'm using 2.0.0.1) and in preferences>content select "dejavu sans" as the default font.

Downgrading ttf-dejavu to 2.11 solves the problem for me.
(text/html)    test.htm (0.1 KiB)
This task depends upon

Closed by  Jan de Groot (JGC)
Sunday, 22 June 2008, 00:11 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Additional comments about closing:  Fixed in 3.0-1 which will appear tomorrow.
Comment by Alberto Gonzalez (Luis) - Friday, 02 February 2007, 14:31 GMT
I'm not sure why nobody else seems to notice this very annoying bug, but anyway, I reported it to the DejaVu bugzilla and they told me it's a well known Firefox + Pango bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=331716

So I guess this can be closed as a DejaVu bug.
Comment by Ramses de Norre (Ramses_de_Norre) - Monday, 18 June 2007, 21:28 GMT
I've got the same issue, but with even more letters than you describe.
I've made a screenshot that you can find here (http://img110.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fontsde0.png) which shows the problem, look at the box with "Welcome to Arch" and notice the words "flexible" and "official".
Comment by Alberto Gonzalez (Luis) - Monday, 18 June 2007, 22:06 GMT
Yes, it's the same problem. DejaVu fonts enabled ligatures again in 2.12, so the only solution is to use the version 2.11 (is what I'm doing) or to configure Firefox to use Bitstream Vera fonts instead. The bug in Firefox won't be solved until at least Firefox 3.0, since they can't find an easy way to solve it for now.
Comment by Alberto Gonzalez (Luis) - Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 12:49 GMT
This problem has reappeared in Firefox 2.0.0.12. Maybe the firefox-2.0-pango-ligatures.patch needs to be updated or something.

To reproduce, set DejaVu Sans as the default Firefox font and open the test case provided with the original report.
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 14:26 GMT
Please try 2.0.0.12-2, which will be in Testing soon.
Comment by Alberto Gonzalez (Luis) - Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 16:26 GMT
I've just installed 2.0.0.12-2, but it doesn't fix the problem.
Comment by Baeyens (berbae) - Saturday, 23 February 2008, 14:40 GMT
I have the same problem.
In CVS I've seen that the firefox-2.0-pango-ligatures patch was suppressed and an iceweasel_2.0.0.12-1_part patch added.
But this one doesn't implement a solution to the ligature problem.
So it seems that the two patches are needed.
Comment by Baeyens (berbae) - Tuesday, 26 February 2008, 16:30 GMT
After reexamining the iceweasel_2.0.0.12-1_part.patch, along with the firefox-1.5-pango-cursor-position.patch and the firefox-2.0-pango-ligatures.patch, I arrived at the conclusion that these two patches could be re-enabled if only the part concerning the nsFontMetricsXft.cpp code is used by the iceweasel patch, but not the one concerning the nsFontMetricsPango.cpp code.
That is, the second part beginning with :
--- iceweasel-2.0.0.12.orig/gfx/src/gtk/nsFontMetricsXft.cpp
+++ iceweasel-2.0.0.12/gfx/src/gtk/nsFontMetricsXft.cpp
@@ -2200,19 +2200,27 @@
nsAutoDrawSpecBuffer::Flush()
...
Only the first part is incompatible with the two firefox patches, and these two are indispensable to solve the ligature problem.

So IIUC the solution should be easy to implement, modifying the iceweasel_2.0.0.12-1_part.patch, to keep only the second part, and rebuilding the package like that with the firefox-1.5-pango-cursor-position.patch and the firefox-2.0-pango-ligatures.patch back in the list of patches to apply.
I hope that that solution could be tried some day soon. Thanks.

(This issue concerns also the xulrunner package)
Comment by Baeyens (berbae) - Wednesday, 27 February 2008, 09:18 GMT
I think that this bug could be promoted to a higher severity because it causes some to use other solutions to have Firefox on their machine.
Personally I'd prefer to keep the integrated optimized Arch binary package and not the other ones offered unofficially.
Comment by Francois Charette (Firmicus) - Friday, 29 February 2008, 10:45 GMT
I agree with Baeyens: this should have higher priority. This bug is so annoying that I have reverted to version 2.0.0.11.
Comment by Greg (dolby) - Sunday, 04 May 2008, 15:34 GMT
is this still an issue with 2.0.0.14 ?
Comment by Greg (dolby) - Sunday, 04 May 2008, 15:35 GMT
i dont have that problem with firefox 3 by the way
Comment by Alberto Gonzalez (Luis) - Sunday, 04 May 2008, 16:39 GMT
Yes, the bug is still present in 2.0.0.14.

In Firefox 3 it is fixed, yes.

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