Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 169836
use the URW "Standard Symbols L" for MathML
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:14 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050922 Fedora/1.0.7-1.1.fc4 Firefox/1.0.7 Description of problem: On MathML sites, Firefox (and Mozilla) will complain that you don't have the font Symbols installed. Setting an alias in /etc/fonts/local.conf to a font with identical character map does not satisfy mozilla, it specifically wants Symbol. On x86 this isn't as much of a problem, you can install the Acrobat Reader and it comes with a Symbol font that Mozilla/FireFox like. However, on PPC that is not an option, Acrobat Reader is not available for ppc. Since the urw-fonts package contains a font that has the same glyphs, Firefox and Mozilla should be patched to have MathML look for that font instead of looking for Symbol. Since it looks like there are a lot of firefox bugs that (at least from the summary) look more important, I'll see if I can figure out a patch and then attach it. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): firefox-1.0.7-1.1.fc4 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start Firefox 2. Go to MathML Site 3. Actual Results: Site loads and works, but Firefox complains that there is not a Symbol font found Expected Results: It should use "Standard Symbols L" which is installed as part of the urw-fonts package, installed on almost any Fedora system with FireFox, and installed in the xft font search path. Additional info: Creating an alias in /etc/fonts/local.conf does not work.
> Since it looks like there are a lot of firefox bugs that (at least from the > summary) look more important, I'll see if I can figure out a patch and then > attach it. Great! That is exactly the attitude that Fedora needs to succeed. However please try to discuss this with upstream, because in most cases we must use a patch that upstream would find acceptable for inclusion in a future release. You may also be interested in helping to find a solution to Bug #150393, because all current and future builds of firefox/thunderbird have PANGO enabled by default.
Apparently there is a set of scientific fonts due to be released next year that will be freely redistributable so the fonts mozilla wants now is just a stopgap measure until then, which isn't very far away. http://www.stixfonts.org/ So this will be a complete non issue is less than a year (the font set is roadmapped to be released in May 2006) So a fix (for the the Symbol font issue anyway) isn't needed with a little patience.