Bug 2062386 - strange font priorities in Firefox
Summary: strange font priorities in Firefox
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: urw-base35-fonts
Version: 37
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Richard Lescak
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: 2096153
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2022-03-09 16:50 UTC by Nelson Pavlosky
Modified: 2023-12-05 21:05 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Clone Of:
: 2096153 (view as bug list)
Environment:
Last Closed: 2023-12-05 21:05:18 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


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Description Nelson Pavlosky 2022-03-09 16:50:21 UTC
Description of problem:
Sometimes, when using a native font stack in CSS on a web page, fonts that are not in the font stack at all are substituted for the desired fonts.

This only seems to affect web pages viewed using:

- Fedora (not Ubuntu, Debian 11, or Manjaro)
- Firefox (not Chrome or Chromium)
- When using the RPM version or Mozilla's official build from their website (not the Flatpak)

Happens in the stable version of Firefox, Firefox Beta, and Firefox nightly.

Two substitutions I've identified so far:

- Droid Sans is substituted for Open Sans
- P052 is substituted for 'URW Palladio L' or Palatino

Substituting for Palatino may be less objectionable, since that's a generic choice, but URW Palladio L is rather specific and it's surprising to see the substitution. This also wouldn't be as objectionable if the font substitutions were better. Droid Sans doesn't look much like Open Sans at all, and P052 looks really ugly (it has unevenly sized letters). In Firefox Flatpak, it instead substitutes the better-looking 'TeX Gyre Pagella', and only does that for Palatino, not for 'URW Palladio L' (which was higher priority in my font stack). This is more desirable behavior.

The source of the problem seems to be that if you run the following command:

fc-match :family="Open Sans"

It returns Droid Sans.

Possibly related bugs:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1820166
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1406790

How reproducible:
Consistently

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a clean Fedora 35 install, and verify that Open Sans is not installed.
2. Create the following web page and view it in a browser:

```
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <title></title>
  <style>
    h1,h2,h3,h4 {
      font-family: Open Sans, Fira Sans;
    }
  </style>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Hello World</h1>
  <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.</p>
</body>
</html>
```

Alternately, view a real live (but more complex) website at https://www.maximumethics.dev/

Actual results:
Notice that the text on the webpage is displayed in Droid Sans, not Open Sans.

Expected results:
The webpage displays the next available font in the font stack, Fira Sans in this case, or the browser's default font if you don't have Fira Sans.

Comment 1 Akira TAGOH 2022-03-30 09:26:08 UTC
Well, maybe good to file a separate bug to object each substitutions.

For Open Sans, google-droid-sans-fonts has the following config:
  <alias binding="same">
    <family>Open Sans</family>
    <accept>
      <family>Droid Sans</family>
    </accept>
  </alias>

This is the reason why you see that behavior.

For URW Palladio L, urw-base35-fonts-common has the following config:
  <alias binding="same">
    <family>URW Palladio L</family>
    <accept>
      <family>P052</family>
    </accept>
  </alias>

And finally for Palatino, it is in urw-base35-p052-fonts:
 <alias binding="same">
    <family>Palatino</family>
    <accept>
      <family>P052</family>
    </accept>
  </alias>

Although those urw config are coming from upstream. so if you have any objections for them, it would be good to talk with URW upstream.

Comment 2 Akira TAGOH 2022-06-13 06:50:36 UTC
created a clone for google-droid-fonts. let's reassign this to urw-base35-fonts for URW specific thing then.

Comment 3 Ben Cotton 2022-08-09 13:13:41 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 37 development cycle.
Changing version to 37.

Comment 4 Aoife Moloney 2023-11-23 00:09:55 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora Linux 37 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora Linux 37 on 2023-12-05.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
'version' of '37'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
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to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora Linux, you are encouraged to change the 'version' to a later version
prior to this bug being closed.

Comment 5 Aoife Moloney 2023-12-05 21:05:18 UTC
Fedora Linux 37 entered end-of-life (EOL) status on None.

Fedora Linux 37 is no longer maintained, which means that it
will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we
are closing this bug.

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