Bug 431608

Summary:	accents and punctuations in Liberation fonts are off writing hebrew texts
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Nadav Kavalerchik <nadavkav>
Component:	distribution	Assignee:	Jens Petersen <petersen>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	rawhide	CC:	eng-i18n-bugs, fonts-bugs, petersen
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	i18n
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2008-02-15 00:48:49 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	432113

Description Nadav Kavalerchik 2008-02-05 21:17:46 UTC

Description of problem:
I am using Open Office (but not related to it, as far as I can tell) to write
some text in Hebrew language with accents and punctuations. 

I get the punctuation marks off the right place in which they suppose to be. 

It works fine with several Open-Type fonts (Ezra SIL, Deja Vu...) so I guess it
is an issue with the internals of the font itself ?

(I hope I filed a bug report in the right place ;-)


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
I can send a pdf or screen shot if it can help

Steps to Reproduce:
1.write some punctuated Hebrew text in OpenOffice Writer
2.apply the Liberation Sans font to the text
3.
  
Actual results:
punctuation is off the font's position

Expected results:
punctuation should be under the respective font in which it was typed for.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Nadav Kavalerchik 2008-02-13 12:11:01 UTC

i've just downloaded "fontmatrix" and "fontforge" and found out that liberation
fonts does not have Hebrew glyphs implemented at all :-(

i was actually getting another font instead of liberation when i choose it in
Writer (Open Office) and i didn't know.

so... maybe we could close this bug and open a different one.
"please add hebrew glyphs to liberation fonts" with the same font quality of
DejaVu or Ezra SIL ? what do you say ?

Comment 2 Jens Petersen 2008-02-14 00:01:05 UTC

Ok, so what was the name of the Hebrew font you saw in Openoffice?

A screenshot might help.

Comment 3 Jens Petersen 2008-02-14 00:04:52 UTC

> maybe we could close this bug and open a different one.

I think we can continue discussing in this bug.

> "please add hebrew glyphs to liberation fonts" with the same font quality of
> DejaVu or Ezra SIL ? what do you say ?

Adding hebrew to liberation-fonts may be a lot of work, but if someone is
able to contribute suitable glyphs it might possible I guess.
Do the equivalent commercial fonts cover Hebrew?

Comment 4 Nadav Kavalerchik 2008-02-14 18:49:56 UTC

i have looked into the way OpenOffice uses fonts
(http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Font-FAQ)
made some debug tests with the FontConfig system
and found out that since i have msttcorefonts package installed
i get missing Hebrew Glyphs in Liberation Sans being replace with 
parallel glyphs from Ariel (MS font).

according to "http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Font-FAQ" 
i can control this replacement at a system wide level - fontconfig 

or OO system wide level - 
$INSTALL/openoffice/share/registry/data/org/openoffice/VCL.xcu 
default font replacement setting 

or from the OO interface "Tools >> Options >> Fonts >> FRT"


i talked to OOo people which told me TTF are less discriptive as regarding to
punctuation marks and positioning them in a text line then OpenType fonts and
that i should use OTF as much as i can.

which means that Ariel TTF is probably OK but not good for Hebrew punctuation
marks in OO. (OOo has a bug-report for improving the handling of ttf more
completely)

so let's close this one out :-)

i will talk to the Culmus (free hebrew fonts) people and see if it is possible
to get their Hebrew glyphs and use them in Liberation. dimension-wise and
legal-wise.

:-)

Comment 5 Jens Petersen 2008-02-15 00:48:49 UTC

Ok, thanks for the information.  If you find a problem when using
culmus, dejavu or other free fonts with Hebrew glyphs, please reopen
or file another bug.