fonts are incorrectly rendered due to not using system cairo

This is bug in mozilla. No solution yet.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541319

That bug is being addressed in bug 512561.

On 02/10/2010 11:54 PM, Harry wrote:
> This is bug in mozilla. No solution yet.
>
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541319
>
>

 The mozilla bug 541319 has been marked as a duplicate of the mozilla bug 404637,
which is the bug this one (512615) is assigned to (see above on top).
So here we have a full circle.
That suggests that this one (512615) is a duplicate of the bug 512561.

On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 07:03:39PM -0000, Tom Jaeger wrote:
> Alexander Sack wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 03:55:29PM -0000, Yuri Khan wrote:
> >> Alexander Sack wrote on 2010-02-04:
> >>> This has highest priority ... but we prefer this getting fixed
> >>> upstream rather than running our own patches or even system cairo
> >>> again
> >> What are the negative consequences of building with system cairo?
> >>
> >
> >
> > major potential issues with security updates ... up to the points
> > where we need to revert from system to non-system cairo in a security
> > update ... hence we must keep this visible and fix for real or get
> > mozilla to not bump cairo requirements in security updates.
>
> I guess I don't really understand what you expect to happen between now
> and beta1. The chances of an lcd filtering patch landing in cairo
> master in this timeframe is minuscule and even if it did, there'd be
> hardly enough time for testing. So we're limited to the patch that is
> out there right now. I only see four options:

the lcd issue is not the main issue here. the upstrema bug link is
wrong. the main issue we need to first fix is to get ffox honour your
hinting style at all ... once that is done we can discuss details like
the lcd patch etc.

 - Alexander

Alexander Sack wrote:
>> I guess I don't really understand what you expect to happen between now
>> and beta1. The chances of an lcd filtering patch landing in cairo
>> master in this timeframe is minuscule and even if it did, there'd be
>> hardly enough time for testing. So we're limited to the patch that is
>> out there right now. I only see four options:
>
> the lcd issue is not the main issue here. the upstrema bug link is
> wrong. the main issue we need to first fix is to get ffox honour your
> hinting style at all ... once that is done we can discuss details like
> the lcd patch etc.

I fail to see how the two issues are related and why one needs to be
fixed before the other. I also think you have your priorities wrong:
This issue has already generated much more discussion than the hinting
style issue, which has been around since the jaunty release cycle (IIRC)
and has a fairly straightforward workaround in terms of messing with
/etc/fonts/conf.d.

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 07:07:07PM -0000, Tom Jaeger wrote:
> Alexander Sack wrote:
> >> I guess I don't really understand what you expect to happen between now
> >> and beta1. The chances of an lcd filtering patch landing in cairo
> >> master in this timeframe is minuscule and even if it did, there'd be
> >> hardly enough time for testing. So we're limited to the patch that is
> >> out there right now. I only see four options:
> >
> > the lcd issue is not the main issue here. the upstrema bug link is
> > wrong. the main issue we need to first fix is to get ffox honour your
> > hinting style at all ... once that is done we can discuss details like
> > the lcd patch etc.
>
> I fail to see how the two issues are related and why one needs to be
> fixed before the other. I also think you have your priorities wrong:
> This issue has already generated much more discussion than the hinting
> style issue, which has been around since the jaunty release cycle (IIRC)
> and has a fairly straightforward workaround in terms of messing with
> /etc/fonts/conf.d.
>

The hinting style issue was around with upstream builds, but not with
our system-cairo builds.

 - Alexander

Alexander Sack wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 07:07:07PM -0000, Tom Jaeger wrote:
>> I fail to see how the two issues are related and why one needs to be
>> fixed before the other. I also think you have your priorities wrong:
>> This issue has already generated much more discussion than the hinting
>> style issue, which has been around since the jaunty release cycle (IIRC)
>> and has a fairly straightforward workaround in terms of messing with
>> /etc/fonts/conf.d.
>>
>
> The hinting style issue was around with upstream builds, but not with
> our system-cairo builds.

I was referring to bug #379761. How is bug #512561 different?

Please fix this faster if possible.

So this will NEVER get fixed ??

Martin, let me repeat my question from comment #126: Why not take care
of this now? What do you expect to happen between now and beta 2?

On 03/12/2010 09:03 AM, Martin Pitt wrote:
> ** Changed in: firefox (Ubuntu Lucid)
> Milestone: ubuntu-10.04-beta-1 => ubuntu-10.04-beta-2

Please build Firefox with system cairo.
The current version is unusable due to the broken font rendering. Building Firefox on one's own isn't easy as the mozilla build options aren't really self explaining.

BTW, Thunderbird 3 from mozilla-daily is also affected.

One possible user workaround is to just use grayscale smoothing, since this avoids the conundrum of cairo library LCD filter conflicts.

On a cross-distro note, Fedora ships with grayscale enabled by default, hence this flaw in a Fedora system would not be immediately apparent. In addition, they also disable LCD filtering [for other reasons], so their subpixel smoothing actually always looks this bad.

Another question might be, not why does Firefox ship its own cairo, but why do they use the worst filtering by default? If they enabled default filtering this bug might never have been noticed, as even experienced Ubuntu users only have seldom reasons to change their LCD filtering type.

> but why do they use the worst filtering by default?

because the fonts looks better with their libs on that settings. most of advanced users rebuild the font libraries or use it from russianfedora repositary or similar places

I've still got this issue with Lucid Beta1, just upgraded and got a shock when I started firefox. The fonts look absolutely awful, I hope there's an official fix soon, or I see this turning into a ppa-based fix-frenzy.

@asac:

Sorry it took me so long to reply, here's a little bit about the history of the patch.

The subpixel patch that ubuntu is currently using was added to cairo master during the 1.8.0 cycle, but then dropped shortly before the release [1], essentially because of concerns over the test suite failing on some systems. Ubuntu (and debian, I think) simply reverted the revert, and have been shipping the patch in their cairo ever since, without any issues that I know of. There have been several attempts to re-introduce the feature, the last one this January [2,3], but they have never resulted in a new patch, partly because it is not clear how upstream wants to solve this (Carl is quite unreasonable on this issue, in my opinion). See also the upstream bug.

The patch is very well-tested and the outcome is generally preferred to the legacy filter, so it's hard to imagine mozilla rejecting it.

[1] http://cgit.freedesktop.org/cairo/commit/?id=5d887ad5dca5af0f8216830d1b04d08a5aba9bee
[2] http://lists.cairographics.org/archives/cairo/2010-January/018778.html
[3] http://lists.cairographics.org/archives/cairo/2010-January/018870.html
[4] http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10301

This should definitely apply to Thunderbird also - they both look awful. I want my subpixel rendering!

As Rob Roland pointed out, it also affects Mozilla Thunderbird.

Two comments point out that Mozilla Thunderbird is also affected, and I have verified and can confirm it too.

Source package is thunderbird, not mozilla-thunderbird.

Thunderbird is using system cairo, so I'm marking this invalid.

@Micah,

UI fonts in both Firefox and Thunderbird look the same to me (as in "different than the rest of the system"). I (maybe wrongly) assumed that this was caused for the same reason as the problems in Firefox. Before I checked, with latest package in lucid as of today, Keith Baker and Rob Roland reported that Thunderbird 3 has the same problem.

Is there any other open bug where this has been reported? I am not the only user that thinks that Thunderbird may be affected, but I don't know if the cause is different.

@bloo

Possibly bug 512561

On 04/01/2010 10:54 AM, bloo wrote:
> @Micah,
>
> UI fonts in both Firefox and Thunderbird look the same to me (as in
> "different than the rest of the system"). I (maybe wrongly) assumed that
> this was caused for the same reason as the problems in Firefox. Before I
> checked, with latest package in lucid as of today, Keith Baker and Rob
> Roland reported that Thunderbird 3 has the same problem.
>
> Is there any other open bug where this has been reported? I am not the
> only user that thinks that Thunderbird may be affected, but I don't know
> if the cause is different.
>
>

This bug was fixed in the package firefox - 3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu1

---------------
firefox (3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

  * New upstream release v3.6.3 (FIREFOX_3_6_3_RELEASE)

  [ Jamie Strandboge <email address hidden> ]
  * AppArmor:
    - add leafpad and mousepad text editors for XFCE users (LP: #543587)

  [ Micah Gersten <email address hidden> ]
  * fix LP: #548866 - forgets middlemouse.contentLoadURL on upgrade; add patch
    from xulrunner-1.9.1
    - update debian/patches/series
    - add debian/patches/lp548866_bz467766_att351173-dont-reset-user-prefs-on-upgrade.patch

  [ Chris Coulson <email address hidden> ]
  * Add a cairo LCD filter to use Freetype LCD colour filtering features,
    based on the same patch applied to our system cairo package. Thanks to
    Marc Deslauriers for helping to make this work. (LP: #512615)
    - add debian/patches/lp512615_cairo_lcd_filter.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Fix LP: #546490 - "Firefox will not start in debug mode"
    - update debian/firefox.sh.in
  * Fix a build issue installing ubuntu-abrowser.js when building with
    DEB_MIN_SYSDEPS=0
    - update debian/rules
 -- Chris Coulson <email address hidden> Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:44:02 +0100

Using Lucid Lynx amd64, fonts are now perfect. Thank you very much!

Lucid Lynx i386 - still have "fat" fonts after update to 3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu1

screen... all fonts in thunderbird and firefox are "fat"

fixed by creating "~/.fonts.conf" file like in attachment

@Whitehat: your "fat fonts" bug isn't what this bug is about. That is bug #379761.

I have such image:
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/5084/screenzi.png

Fonts are poor.

I suspect a lot of you upgraded. I've had this before in previous upgrade/downgrade issues where Firefox and Thunderbird skitz out and show horrible fonts. Thankfully the fix is stupidly simple:

sudo fc-cache -fv

Then kill off firefox/tbird and re-launch them. You'll have crisp, dainty fonts.

It always takes me about 12 hours to find that out each time I break my fonts. I should alias it.