FS#58031 - [fontconfig] Some fonts seem to always be bolded after recent upgrade

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Zhao Rui (renyuneyun) - Thursday, 29 March 2018, 22:22 GMT
Last edited by Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) - Wednesday, 30 January 2019, 18:37 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Andreas Radke (AndyRTR)
Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:
I recently performed a system upgrade, and updated a whole bunch of packages (see log below).
The first thing I notice after reboot (since there is a kernel update) is that all applets (I'm using kde plasma) contain fonts much heavier (bold?), and some applets are mis-placed (because of the increased space taken by the texts).

The most important problem I notice is that in thunderbird, all email titles are in bold, so there is no visual difference between read and unread items.
Firefox is in a similar situation -- every piece of texts (of the browser itself) is bolded.


Then I figured out when I switch my font from adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts (which is my default font in many places) to something else (e.g. ttf-arphic-ukai), the problem goes away (in both thunderbird and firefox, but I haven't tried plasma yet).
I also noticed that when I switch to the "Normal" font of adobe-source-han-sans-tw-fonts, this problem also goes away. Note for adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts, there aren't those different
fonts", but "one" font with many different "font styles"; while for adobe-source-han-sans-tw-fonts, there are those different "fonts", but each has only one "font style".


However, I also notice that many other GTK apps don't have this problem, e.g. chromium, GCstar, audacity.
I also tried Qt4 and Qt5 apps: Qt5 apps have this problem; Qt4 apps don't.



Therefore, I don't have a clue where this problem lies. It could be in Qt5 and thunderbird & firefox, or in adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts, or both.


Additional info:
See the attached log file.

I'm using locale zh_CN.UTF-8; I also did some scaling and used the "fix font DPI" to 144, as optimization (for display) of HiDPI (and there may be some other tricks, but none related to font, except for the one mentioned).


Steps to reproduce:

Everytime I start thunderbird / firefox with GTK font set to (the relevant font of) adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig)
Wednesday, 30 January 2019, 18:37 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Additional comments about closing:  fontconfig 2.13.1
Comment by Zhao Rui (renyuneyun) - Friday, 30 March 2018, 23:13 GMT
Ok, I think I may narrow this problem down a little bit:

When I'm forcing applications to use en_US.UTF-8 locale, the font changed to an always-bolded font, Adobe Fan Heiti Std.
After changing font to adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts and executing thunderbird (both using en_US.UTF-8 locale), the problem went away.

Therefore, I suspect there is some inconsistency between the English name and localized name of fonts, and this inconsistency causes the problem.
The adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts has its localized (Chinese) name under Chinese locale, but it is called "Source Han Sans CN" under English locale.
Comment by Zhao Rui (renyuneyun) - Saturday, 31 March 2018, 10:08 GMT
@Scimmia Sorry for the inconvinence, but I don't think this should be assigned to the package adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts (solely). I may not well present the problem, but (I think) this isn't (only) related to adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts.

I'm aware there is an upgrade of adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts in my log, but this happened only *after* I observed the problem.
I was upgrading it because I thought it was the problem of me using an old version, but it turned out that it's not that case.

As said above, this seems likely to be related to the inconcistent handling of fonts (through name or other identifiers, which isn't consistent across languages) in thunderbird (GTK?) and Qt5 (or, on the other hand, it could be the problem of Qt4 because it doesn't respect the standard?).
Comment by lilydjwg (lilydjwg) - Saturday, 12 May 2018, 10:37 GMT Comment by Zhao Rui (renyuneyun) - Sunday, 27 May 2018, 12:10 GMT
@lilydjwg Yes, seems you are right.

The bug seems to be fixed already, and this report may be closed by now.
Comment by Eli Schwartz (eschwartz) - Thursday, 07 June 2018, 02:39 GMT
  • Field changed: Attached to Project (Community Packages → Arch Linux)
  • Field changed: Summary ([adobe-source-han-sans-cn-fonts] Some fonts seem to always be bolded after recent upgrade → [fontconfig] Some fonts seem to always be bolded after recent upgrade)
  • Task reassigned to Andreas Radke (AndyRTR), Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig)
It's not fixed until it works. And from what I see, we need another four commits from fontconfig up to https://cgit.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/commit/?id=a8a6efa805fc03e790214e8a0bc55843a258d774 in order to fix this.
Comment by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Wednesday, 30 January 2019, 13:17 GMT
What's the status with latest updates? You may also try to update to pkg to latest git commit and test again.
Comment by Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) - Wednesday, 30 January 2019, 18:37 GMT
The commits mentioned are in 2.13.1 so this should be fixed already.

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