99412 - Please change the unix.js min font size default settings

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 96535

(Core :: Internationalization, defect)

Description

[Yasuo Ohgaki]

I view web pages uses Japanese encoding. Small font will not be scaled, since
unix.js specifies too *large* font size for "min font size" 

pref("font.min-size.variable.ja", 16);
pref("font.min-size.fixed.ja", 16);

Could you change min-size default from 16 to 8? 

pref("font.min-size.variable.ja", 8);
pref("font.min-size.fixed.ja", 8);

Many Japanese users are spending hours to find out what's wrong with small
fonts, I think. 
Windows version scales small font properly. Why not for UNIX version?(Page
doesn't look nice with font.min-size.*=16 at all, also)

Comment 1

[Yasuo Ohgaki]

FYI: This report is related to 
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30910

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

->i18n?

Comment 3

[kill this account]

oh boy, what a sore spot you have hit.

I have tried several times to lower this number only to be forced to raise
it again due to lack of Japanese fonts on our reference system, Redhat 6.2J.

Redhat 6.2J has 

 1) a nice Japanese with a small (~10px) and medium size but no large size.
 2) a nice Japanese with a medium (~16 px) and larges sizes but no smaller 
    sizes.

If we allow smaller sizes we have the following problems:

A user can choose the smaller fonts and everything will look great except 
that large text such as titles on web pages will bitmap scale and looks 
absolutely *horrible*. Thus many users end up picking the larger font.

If the CSS specs a small font (say 10 px) and the user has selected the larger
font the glyph fill-in code will end up putting the 16 px glyphs in line that 
only has space for 10 px and the chars will overlap with the text above and 
below.

Bug 99010 (aka: bug 71486) addresses this but will not be in for a while.

At this point I am seriously considering supplying fonts as part of the
installation so we are not hobbled by lack of fonts and can set this lower.

related bugs: bug 89520, bug 96535

If your system has a better selection of Japanese fonts please feel to change
this number on your system.

Comment 4

[Yasuo Ohgaki]

Attachment: Mozilla 0.9.4+ screenshot

Comment 5

[Yasuo Ohgaki]

Thanks for the detailed explainations and sorry for hitting the sore spot. I
understand this issue much better now.
It's not trivial to change the setting after all.

I'm using distribution called Kondara 2.0 (http://www.kondara.org/) and
RedHat 7.x currently. RedHat6.2J has poor Japanese support compare to recent
distributions... Newer distributions, which have better truetype font support,
have other problems. 

Just for your information, I attached the screenshot of a test page. (Mozilla
0.9.4+ with default font setting under Kondara-2.0) RedHat 7.1.0 also displays
the page like this with default settings, IIRC.
Please feel free to change status to "won't fix" or whatever you feel it's
appropriate.
 

Comment 6

[Yasuo Ohgaki]

Attachment: Screenshot with proper(?) font setting (Mozilla 0.9.3)

Comment 7

[Yasuo Ohgaki]

Oops, sorry. I verified the test page with RedHat 7.1.0J. It displays acceptable
page with defualt settings. Font are a little larger than it should be as
expected. (Size 16 where 8pt is specified in CSS)

Comment 8

[Masaki Katakai]

I understand changing min font in unix.js can not solve the problem that
bold glyphs become bigger.

Ohgaki-san, can you try again after deleting your ~/.mozilla and after
setting unix.js? I'm thinking you have changed font preferences.

I'm seeing this on several distribution e.g. Vine and Kondara. Because
they're providing jis-fixed-bold fonts but it's only for 24 point.

[katakai@are ~]$ xlsfonts -fn "-jis-fixed-bold-*"
-jis-fixed-bold-i-normal--24-230-75-75-c-240-jisx0208.1983-0
-jis-fixed-bold-r-normal--24-230-75-75-c-240-jisx0208.1983-0
[katakai@are ~]$ 

It seems that Mozilla looks for bold font as "-jis-fixed-bold-..."
but it matches "-jis-fixed-bold-r-normal--24-230-75-75-c-240-jisx0208.1983-0"
and draws glyphs with the fonts. Brian, do you think this is a bug?

I agree with Brian, which is it's not possible to adjust font setting
for all distributions, users and distributors can change the setting
for Mozilla to run with proper fonts on thier systems. But we should
provide better FAQ for japanese users on www.mozilla.org.

Comment 9

[kill this account]

Ohgaki-san:
> Please feel free to change status to "won't fix" or whatever you feel it's
> appropriate.

This is a serious problem. I would prefer to leave this open even if I cannot 
fix it right not

Katakai-san:
> Mozilla looks for bold font as "-jis-fixed-bold-..." but it matches 
> "-jis-fixed-bold-r-normal--24-230-75-75-c-240-jisx0208.1983-0"

I do not understand how this might be considered a bug.

Is it that the desired size is wrong?

Comment 10

[kill this account]

s/fix it right not/fix it right now./

Comment 11

[kill this account]

Ftang wants to implement bug 90813, "anti-aliased bitmap scaling", which 
would allow us to scale the limited fonts and then we could reduce the 
min-size.

Comment 12

[Yasuo Ohgaki]

> ------- Additional Comments From [e-mail]  2001-09-12 23:17 -----
--
> I understand changing min font in unix.js can not solve the problem that
> bold glyphs become bigger.
> 
> Ohgaki-san, can you try again after deleting your ~/.mozilla and after
> setting unix.js? I'm thinking you have changed font preferences.

Katakai-san. I've changed default font preferences for Mozilla-0.9.3, since I 
use it as my primary browser. I'm using TrueType font (Komachi-gothic) for 
Japanese characters.

I created new user and tried it on Kondara-2.0/Mozilla-0.9.4+ with default font 
settings (X and Mozilla). The result is the same. I get much larger font than 
it should be. It seems "-jis-fixed-bold-r-normal--24-230-75-75-c-240-
jisx0208.1983-0" is used as you mentioned.

> I agree with Brian, which is it's not possible to adjust font setting
> for all distributions, users and distributors can change the setting
> for Mozilla to run with proper fonts on thier systems. But we should
> provide better FAQ for japanese users on www.mozilla.org.

+1

Comment 13

[kill this account]

We are still struggling with this problem.

It does not look like we will be able to supply fonts with the browser in any
release coming out soon.

Font aliasing really helps but it requires the user to actively do extra
steps and have installer / root priviledge. It does not looks like we will be
able to do this automatically in any release coming out soon.

Our current thinking is that making the minimum font size 16 pixels as a way
to avoid pixel overlap makes the all the UI too large. This makes the browser
technically "correct" but looks very poor. 

Perhaps we should lower the number and allow the smaller fonts. The Japanese
UI will look much better.

Of course nothing in the current releases will prevent a user from selecting a 
font that may cause glyphs to overlap. The user has several ways to workaround
this:

  select a font that has smaller sizes

  increase the "Text Size" (zoom)

  select a larger font size

  advanced: make a font alias that combines several font types into one logical 
            font

  advanced: add more Japanese fonts

The question is:

   Will pixel overlap happen a lot or a little?

Comment 14

[rbs]

katakai reported that my patch over at bug 99010 is helping this one too.

Comment 15

[kill this account]

The work in bug 99010 will definitely help since glyph fill-in will not lead 
to oversized glyph overlapping the text above/below. This would allow us to
lower the minimum size.

This is one of of my motivations for trying to help push bug 99010 to
check-in.

Comment 16

[kill this account]

The "font.size..." affects text without a CSS spec. Since our 
chrome (menus, etc.) have a CSS size spec they are not affected by 
this value.  I feel that these are not the most critical values 
sinces we have a UI for changing them. This is something we expect 
users to change.

The "font.min-size.variable.ja" affects all text including our 
chrome but we do not have any UI for changing it. Thus, I feel it 
is a more critical value.

On RH 6.2J a "font.min-size.variable.ja" of 12 looks best and 14 is 
okay (some like the smaller 12 px text, others feels we will get
complaints that the glyphs do not look like proper Japanese
characters).

On RH 7.0J a "font.min-size.variable.ja" of 12 causes the text on 
http://home.netscape.com/ja to be jammed together. Setting the 
min-size of 14 produced nice results.

The "font.min-size.fixed.ja" affect email if fixed width display
is choosen (Is fixed width the default setting?). I have not seen 
pixel jamming with a value of 10 here but we need to be careful 
that we do enough testing.

On both RH 6.2J and 7.0J a "font.size.variable.ja" of 16 looks
okay on many pages but leads to jammed chars on 
http://www.yahoo.co.jp. Moving up to 18 seems to spread it out
enough.

A value of 14 for "font.min-size.variable.ja" seems good for email.

Thus my current preferences are:

    pref("font.name.serif.ja", "misc-fixed-jisx0208.1983-0"); 
    pref("font.name.sans-serif.ja", "misc-fixed-jisx0208.1983-0"); 
    pref("font.name.monospace.ja", "misc-fixed-jisx0208.1983-0"); 
    pref("font.size.variable.ja", 18); 
    pref("font.size.fixed.ja", 14); 
    pref("font.scale.bitmap.min.ja", 40); 
    pref("font.min-size.variable.ja", 14); 
    pref("font.min-size.fixed.ja", 10); 

Comment 17

[kill this account]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 96535 ***

Comment 18

[Yuying Long]

Marking as verified as dup.