Description of problem: Seems like currently Firefox startup script is setting MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO=1 unconditionally, which makes one unable to turn Firefox Pango support off. A trivial fix is to simply not set MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO if it's already set. Mozilla doesn't have this problem since it doesn't set MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO at all. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): firefox-1.0.1-1.3.2
BTW, I just noted that setting MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO in Firefox is against what is advertised in FC3 release notes: o Firefox and Mozilla can be enabled with pango rendering support, which enables many text layout features, including the rendering of CTL (Complex Text Layout) such as Indic languages. To enable this, set the following environment variable when running Firefox or Mozilla: MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO=1 The problem is that the current Pango backend has serious problems with Arabic, for example it hangs on some random pages, got http://rira.ir/ for example.
Have you reported this pango + arabic hang in Bugzilla? This should go into a separate bug.
Pango hang is awaiting in bug 151767. Another Pango+Arabic/Hebrew bug is being worked at in Mozilla bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=284927 So, while the hang is now known to be not Firefox specific, but the latter is indeed a rendering problem with Pango Firefox. So I personally appreciate if pango rendering is disable by default (it was enable on Feb 24). I've seen a couple people so far complaining about update breaking their Firefox Persian rendering.
Well, with the newer firefox-1.0.2-1.3.1 it's even worse. Both firefox and mozilla have pango backend selected at compile time and it cannot be turned off using environment variables anymore :(. That means half of Persian/Arabic pages cannot be rendered in FC3.
You can use MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 now.
Thanks Mr. Aillon. But Thunderbird still have pango enabled and doesn't listen to MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1. So the arabic/persian/hebrew problem exicts on RSS feeds and HTML mails yet.
I still believe the whole "on by default" is a bigger change than to fit FC3 updates. Moreover, I believe they all should keep respecting MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO, though they are free to decide whatever if it's not defined. MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO is not documented anywhere. MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO is in the release notes.