Description of problem: Type 1 fonts are not kerned when rendered with pango in firefox. For example, in the words "World" and "Weather", the bounding boxes of the "W" and the following glyph do not overlap as they should. Kerning does occur with TrueType fonts. Type 1 fonts also do not undergo ligature substitution, but TrueType do. Kerning does occur if I first use fontforge to convert Nimbus Roman No9 L Regular (a Type 1 font) to TrueType or OpenType and then select the new font, but the results are truly hideous. (Blame autohinting?) So it seems to be a choice between nicely rendered Type 1 fonts without kerning or ugly {True,Open}Type fonts with kerning. Someone with a substantial knowledge of fontforge may have better results. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): firefox-1.5.0.9-3.fc6.x86_64 pango-1.14.10-1.fc6.x86_64 libXft-2.1.10-1.1.x86_64 How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start Firefox with pango enabled. Disable "allow pages to choose their own fonts". 2. View a web page with obvious kernable text, such as http://news.bbc.co.uk , and view words such as "World" or "Weather". 3. Switch between "DejaVu GCL Serif" and one of {"Nimbus Roman No9 L", "Luxi Serif"} and observe kerning or its lack. Also look for ligatures such as "fi" and "fl" in words like "field" or "file" or "flight". Actual results: Truetype fonts such as DejaVu GLC Serif are kerned and undergo ligature substitution, while Type 1 fonts such as Nimbus Roman No9 L and Luxi Serif are not. Expected results: All fonts with kerning tables are kerned. All ligatures are substituted. Additional info: I know this is a "bug" in pango, because if firefox is started with MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 in its environment, then *all* fonts are unkerned, even DejaVu GLC Serif. Pango has improved firefox by introducing kerning and ligature substitution for TrueType fonts. It would be very nice if we could get the same support for Type 1 fonts, or somebody to covert them into {Open,True}Type fonts of satisfactory quality.
Does the bug happen in gedit too?
Yes, the bug occurs in gedit, with no kerning in "Weather" and "World" with Type 1 fonts but kerning with TTF fonts (DejaVu Serif). Correction: DejaVu Serif is a bad font for seeing the ligatures problem, as it does not appear to have ligatures for fi or fl. The non-substitution can be seen by using fontforge to convert Nimbus Roman No9 L to TTF and then comparing the results. Ligatures are present for the TTF but not the Type 1. I am using an LCD monitor with subpixel smoothing. Does that change the renderer?
dejavu ligatures were removed for several months to give pango & firefox devs the time to fix their bug. The ligatures are back in F7
The upstream bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481209
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This bug is still present in firefox-2.0.0.13-1.fc8.x86_64. For example, TeX Gyre Termes (TTF), a derivative of URW Nimbus Roman No9 L, is kerned, while URW Nimbus Roman No9 L (Type 1) is not kerned.
Yes, Pango doesn't ligate Type1 fonts. Not going to be fixed ever. Just use OpenType fonts instead.
OK. Since this bug was reported, TeX Gyre have made many core fonts available as good quality TTF, mitigating the problem. The non-ligating of Type 1 fonts could be considered a feature, because there is no way to turn it off for TTF/OTF in some applications (i.e. Eclipse). For example, if a TTF/OTF version of Courier or DejaVu Sans Mono is used in Eclipse, ligatures are honoured, and source code "file =" has ligation applied to the "fi", converting it to a single symbol. This is Not What The User Wanted. The workaround is to select the Type 1 version (e.g. Bitstream Vera Sans Mono).