Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved
Ian Jackson writes (Re: Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved): But yes, if you don't use pango for everything then you have to find the places in Mozilla where it uses fontconfig and change those too, to pass the new flag. I haven't done that at this stage because it wasn't relevant to the configuration in Ubuntu. It has so turned out that we (Ubuntu) have just changed our firefox setup to sometimes not use pango, so we have had to make those changes to firefox. We've also discovered that the usual way to call fontconfig when you want to present to the user a list of fonts is to supply a fairly minimal pattern and call FcFontList or the like; which doesn't work with anymetrics=1 because the pattern never matches. Personally I think this is a design error in the FC API: configuration-directing attributes like anymetrics should be removed during canonicalisation which ought to completely solve that, but this wouldn't work at present because applications generally don't do canonicalisation between pattern creation and font enumeration. Indeed, I found a couple of places in pango where a pattern was constructed and FcFontMatch was called without invoking the canonicalisation and configuration processing. It seems to me that the canonicalisation and config processing, which are supposed to be performed by all fontconfig-using programs, should be done automatically the first time a pattern is used, whether for enumeration or finding a particular font. This would eliminate mistakes of this kind (and make application code smaller and more straightforward). fontconfig would have to maintain a copy of the original pattern in case the application modified it or had other unusual flows (or at least, it would have to mark the pattern as `canonicalised' and refuse to further edit it). So, currently the correct behaviour for a non-metrics-sensitive program is to set anymetrics=1 iff it is looking for a particular font, and not to set it iff the pattern is to be used for enumeration. This is not quite correct and might lead to misbehaviour in the future, but the behaviour is correct in the current configuration. The revised patch to pango, and the patch to firefox that I mentioned earlier, are attached. Thanks, Ian. diff -u pango1.0-1.12.1/debian/control pango1.0-1.12.1/debian/control --- pango1.0-1.12.1/debian/control +++ pango1.0-1.12.1/debian/control @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ Section: libs Priority: optional Maintainer: Sebastien Bacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Uploaders: Debian GNOME Maintainers [EMAIL PROTECTED], Akira TAGOH [EMAIL PROTECTED], Andreas Rottmann [EMAIL PROTECTED], Andrew Lau [EMAIL PROTECTED], Carlos Perelló MarÃn [EMAIL PROTECTED], Clément Stenac [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ed Boraas [EMAIL PROTECTED], Edd Dumbill [EMAIL PROTECTED], Emil Soleyman-Zomalan [EMAIL PROTECTED], Guilherme de S. Pastore [EMAIL PROTECTED], Gustavo Noronha Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED], J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) [EMAIL PROTECTED], Joe Drew [EMAIL PROTECTED], Johannes Rohr [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jordi Mallach [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo [EMAIL PROTECTED], Josselin Mouette [EMAIL PROTECTED], Loic Minier [EMAIL PROTECTED], Marc HE Brockschmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED], OndÅej Surý [EMAIL PROTECTED], Rob Bradford [EMAIL PROTECTED], Robert McQueen [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ross Burton [EMAIL PROTECTED], Sjoerd Simons [EMAIL PROTECTED], Takuo KITAME [EMAIL PROTECTED] +Uploaders: Debian GNOME Maintainers [EMAIL PROTECTED], Akira TAGOH [EMAIL PROTECTED], Andreas Rottmann [EMAIL PROTECTED], Andrew Lau [EMAIL PROTECTED], Carlos Perelló MarÃn [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ed Boraas [EMAIL PROTECTED], Edd Dumbill [EMAIL PROTECTED], Emil Soleyman-Zomalan [EMAIL PROTECTED], Gustavo Noronha Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED], J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) [EMAIL PROTECTED], Joe Drew [EMAIL PROTECTED], Johannes Rohr [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jordi Mallach [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo [EMAIL PROTECTED], Josselin Mouette [EMAIL PROTECTED], Marc HE Brockschmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED], OndÅej Surý [EMAIL PROTECTED], Rob Bradford [EMAIL PROTECTED], Robert McQueen [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ross Burton [EMAIL PROTECTED], Sjoerd Simons [EMAIL PROTECTED], Takuo KITAME [EMAIL PROTECTED] Build-Depends: debhelper (= 4.9.12), libfreetype6-dev (= 2.1.7), libx11-dev, libxrender-dev, libxt-dev, libglib2.0-dev (= 2.10.0), pkg-config, defoma (= 0.11.1), libxft-dev, libfontconfig1-dev (= 2.1.91), autotools-dev, po-debconf, gnome-pkg-tools, libcairo2-dev (= 1.0.0) Standards-Version: 3.6.2 diff -u pango1.0-1.12.1/debian/changelog pango1.0-1.12.1/debian/changelog --- pango1.0-1.12.1/debian/changelog +++ pango1.0-1.12.1/debian/changelog @@ -1,3 +1,27 @@ +pango1.0 (1.12.1-1ubuntu4) dapper; urgency=low + + * Do not use FC_ANY_METRICS while listing, because that's a property +that is never matched exactly and so only valid when matching. + + -- Ian Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:01:59 +0100 + +pango1.0 (1.12.1-1ubuntu3) dapper; urgency=low + + * Correct
Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved
Indeed, as Steve Pomeroy says, the problem is that websites specifying `Times' (say) get Nimbus rather than DejaVu (or whatever the default is in Debian). Fixing this is complicated because, as Keith Packard says, Nimbus is needed for (for example) PDF viewing, because DejaVu has different metrics. The real problem is that the fontconfig configuration can't tell whether we're (i) a web browser, which doesn't really care much about the metrics but definitely wants a font that looks good on screen or (ii) a PDF handling program (or similar), which must use fonts with exactly the metrics of the requested font. Without a way to distinguish these cases, it is impossible to (as Keith says) `work out [the] rules for when each family should be used and try to make that happen'. After staring at the various packages involved, I concluded that the right answer was: a new font template property `anymetrics' which would be set by applications which would not mind fonts with different metrics to that specified in the pattern. Doing it that way round means that the stricter behaviour is the default, so that we will err on the side of ugliness rather than brokenness. In Ubuntu we configure firefox to use pango for all of its text rendering (for i18n charset reasons). And as it turns out, I think applications that use pango (such as firefox) always leave the specific text sizing and placement to pango, and pango uses the actual metrics from the actual font. So the correct place to set the anymetrics fontconfig flag is in pango, and firefox does not need to be changed. I could be wrong about pango clients but it seems likely that this is true for the majority at least. If it's not true for all - if, for example, pango even provides an interface that could be used by a program which needs to use specific fonts and do its own text placement - then an option could be added to pango's font selection machinery to turn anymetrics off. It seems to me from what little I know abouit this situation that this is the right way round for the default at this layer. Finally, this provides us with the tools to selectively disable the font alias... directives for the relatively ugly Nimbus fonts when we know that we don't care about the metrics so that DejaVu fallback is good. Sadly alias... can only be made conditional by turning it into match... which is much more verbose. An if... construct would have been very useful. Attached: * Patch to fontconfig (against 2.3.2-1.1ubuntu9) to - provide a new FC_ANY_METRICS (aka `anymetrics') boolean property. - only use Nimbus for Times et al if anymetrics is not set. * Patch to pango (against pango1.0 1.12.1-1ubuntu1) to set FC_ANY_METRICS (aka `anymetrics') to FcTrue everywhere a fontconfig font pattern is constructed. Note that the versioned build-dependency on libfontconfig1-dev may need adjusting for Debian. Regards, Ian. diff -ruN --exclude '*~' orig/fontconfig-2.3.2/debian/changelog fontconfig-2.3.2/debian/changelog --- orig/fontconfig-2.3.2/debian/changelog 2006-04-19 14:31:45.0 +0100 +++ fontconfig-2.3.2/debian/changelog 2006-04-19 14:37:51.0 +0100 @@ -1,3 +1,15 @@ +fontconfig (2.3.2-1.1ubuntu10) dapper; urgency=low + + * Correctly fix the (eg) firefox vs. (eg) evince font metrics +problem: +- New FC_ANY_METRICS property, boolean. +- Revert change from 2.3.2-1.1ubuntu9 and instead: +- Change URW Nimbus font aliases in fonts.conf.in into equivalent + match directives so that we can add an additional test which + disables them when the anymetrics property is true. + + -- Ian Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:51:29 +0100 + fontconfig (2.3.2-1.1ubuntu9) dapper; urgency=low * Until firefox and thunderbird can be tought to use it's own diff -ruN --exclude '*~' orig/fontconfig-2.3.2/debian/patches/05_no_nimbus_fallback.patch fontconfig-2.3.2/debian/patches/05_no_nimbus_fallback.patch --- orig/fontconfig-2.3.2/debian/patches/05_no_nimbus_fallback.patch 2006-04-19 14:31:45.0 +0100 +++ fontconfig-2.3.2/debian/patches/05_no_nimbus_fallback.patch 1970-01-01 01:00:00.0 +0100 @@ -1,23 +0,0 @@ fonts.conf.in~ 2006-04-18 16:06:59.203112376 + -+++ fonts.conf.in 2006-04-18 16:11:52.197570448 + -@@ -147,6 +147,12 @@ - !-- - URW provides metric and shape compatible fonts for these 3 Adobe families. - -- -+!-- -+ Disable the usage of metric and shape compatible fonts for the -+ 3 Adobe families. evince cannot display documents correctly -+ with these replacements not beeing available, but web browsers not -+ using these fonts look definitely nicer. -+ - alias - familyTimes/family - acceptfamilyNimbus Roman No9 L/family/accept -@@ -159,6 +165,7 @@ - familyCourier/family - acceptfamilyNimbus Mono L/family/accept - /alias -+ -- - - !-- - AMT provides metric and shape compatible fonts for these three web font diff
Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved
Josselin Mouette writes (Re: Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved): Le lundi 24 avril 2006 à 12:35 +0100, Ian Jackson a écrit : Indeed, as Steve Pomeroy says, the problem is that websites specifying `Times' (say) get Nimbus rather than DejaVu (or whatever the default is in Debian). Again, this is caused by a rewrite of sans into Helvetica and sans-serif into Times in Mozilla. This bug has been fixed in xulrunner and can easily be fixed in firefox as well. This may be true and will cause the problem to manifest on most websites rather than just on ones that ask for `Times' or `Helvetica' explicity. However, even if we fix Mozilla then we'll still have problems with those latter sites. In Ubuntu we configure firefox to use pango for all of its text rendering (for i18n charset reasons). And as it turns out, I think applications that use pango (such as firefox) always leave the specific text sizing and placement to pango, and pango uses the actual metrics from the actual font. So the correct place to set the anymetrics fontconfig flag is in pango, and firefox does not need to be changed. Epiphany disables pango, apart for some languages for which it is necessary to use it. So this method wouldn't be enough for epiphany; that would mean dealing with Mozilla's internals to add the same hack. This is not a hack, and I resent you describing it that way. It's the correct solution; we add the missing piece of information to the interface. Or do you disagree with some part of my rationale ? If so, please come out and explain ! But yes, if you don't use pango for everything then you have to find the places in Mozilla where it uses fontconfig and change those too, to pass the new flag. I haven't done that at this stage because it wasn't relevant to the configuration in Ubuntu. Alternatively you might say that the default is wrong, and that instead we should edit the programs that have (or whose documents have) a specific idea of what the metrics are going to be. Thanks, Ian.
Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved
Le lundi 24 avril 2006 à 12:35 +0100, Ian Jackson a écrit : Indeed, as Steve Pomeroy says, the problem is that websites specifying `Times' (say) get Nimbus rather than DejaVu (or whatever the default is in Debian). Again, this is caused by a rewrite of sans into Helvetica and sans-serif into Times in Mozilla. This bug has been fixed in xulrunner and can easily be fixed in firefox as well. In Ubuntu we configure firefox to use pango for all of its text rendering (for i18n charset reasons). And as it turns out, I think applications that use pango (such as firefox) always leave the specific text sizing and placement to pango, and pango uses the actual metrics from the actual font. So the correct place to set the anymetrics fontconfig flag is in pango, and firefox does not need to be changed. Epiphany disables pango, apart for some languages for which it is necessary to use it. So this method wouldn't be enough for epiphany; that would mean dealing with Mozilla's internals to add the same hack. -- .''`. Josselin Mouette/\./\ : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] `. `'[EMAIL PROTECTED] `- Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom
Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved
Le jeudi 20 avril 2006 à 19:41 -0400, Steve Pomeroy a écrit : Package: fontconfig Version: 2.3.2-5.1 Followup-For: Bug #299697 fontconfig just updated my /etc/fonts/font.conf file, reminding me that this bug is still unresolved. Does anyone have any further info on this issue? There are lots of things in this bug report, so I'd like to make them clear. Most contributors to this thread noticed that the URW fonts had replaced the Bitstream fonts in Firefox/epiphany. This is caused by the Mozilla suite replacing the sans-serif and serif aliases by Helvetica and Times. We will not include a broken patch from Ubuntu for fontconfig when the bug is in Mozilla; it has been fixed in xulrunner 1.8.0.1-3. I don't know whether it has been fixed in firefox as well, but it is only a matter of porting the same patch. I'd like to know whether the original bug report (ugly fonts at small sizes) is the same. You can check the latest epiphany package, in which I'm sure the DejaVu fonts are correctly used by default. You can also try with removing the gsfonts-x11 package. Regards, -- .''`. Josselin Mouette/\./\ : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] `. `'[EMAIL PROTECTED] `- Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom
Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved
On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 09:24:50AM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: Le jeudi 20 avril 2006 à 19:41 -0400, Steve Pomeroy a écrit : Package: fontconfig Version: 2.3.2-5.1 Followup-For: Bug #299697 fontconfig just updated my /etc/fonts/font.conf file, reminding me that this bug is still unresolved. Does anyone have any further info on this issue? There are lots of things in this bug report, so I'd like to make them clear. Most contributors to this thread noticed that the URW fonts had replaced the Bitstream fonts in Firefox/epiphany. This is caused by the Mozilla suite replacing the sans-serif and serif aliases by Helvetica and Times. We will not include a broken patch from Ubuntu for fontconfig when the bug is in Mozilla; it has been fixed in xulrunner 1.8.0.1-3. I don't know whether it has been fixed in firefox as well, but it is only a matter of porting the same patch. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the problem wasn't the default font for Firefox, etc. but that websites would specify Helvetica and Times in their CSS, which would then use the Nimbus fonts. That's certainly the case for myself, anyhow. (My Firefox default has always been the generic 'sans', etc.) Keith: I think your suggestions are much more sane than the current default. I've been simply putting a ban on the Nimbus family, but I imagine others are not so keen on that ;-) Perhaps this is really a bug report for the Nimbus fonts themselves? I mean, I can understand why a metric and shape compatible font is such a good thing, but why does it have to render poorly in certain contexts? In fact, what contexts *do* the render well? I'd like to know whether the original bug report (ugly fonts at small sizes) is the same. You can check the latest epiphany package, in which I'm sure the DejaVu fonts are correctly used by default. You can also try with removing the gsfonts-x11 package. DejaVu has been recently rendering poorly as well, so I don't think that helps much. But that's for another bug report ;-) Regards, -- .''`. Josselin Mouette/\./\ : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] `. `'[EMAIL PROTECTED] `- Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom -- Steve Pomeroy http://staticfree.info/
Bug#299697: fontconfig: Still unresolved
Package: fontconfig Version: 2.3.2-5.1 Followup-For: Bug #299697 fontconfig just updated my /etc/fonts/font.conf file, reminding me that this bug is still unresolved. Does anyone have any further info on this issue? -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers testing APT policy: (700, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.16 Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Versions of packages fontconfig depends on: ii defoma0.11.8-0.1 Debian Font Manager -- automatic f ii fontconfig-config 2.3.2-5.1 generic font configuration library ii libc6 2.3.6-7GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libfontconfig12.3.2-5.1 generic font configuration library fontconfig recommends no packages. -- debconf information: fontconfig/subpixel_rendering: Automatic fontconfig/enable_bitmaps: false fontconfig/hinting_type: Native -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
