1028732 - use_document_fonts=0 is useless without special case for downloadable font based icons

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 789788

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, defect)

Description

[Dmitry Borodaenko]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140621231050

Steps to reproduce:

Set use_document_fonts=0, load github.com or any other site using downloadable fonts based icons.


Actual results:

Icons are not displayed correctly. The only solution offered on support.mozilla.org is to set use_document_fonts=1 (unacceptable if you prefer your own fonts for everything except icons).


Expected results:

TL;DR:

I want to use my own font consistently across all my desktop, including all web content, which has become a major part of my desktop, and I want sites that use fonts for icons to be rendered correctly.

Long version:

One of the primary benefits of Firefox over Chrome for me is the ability to override the variety of fonts used by different web sites with a single font, same font I use everywhere else on my desktop (in my case, DejaVu Sans). However, a growing number of sites is relying on downloadable fonts to display icons (GitHub alone is enough for this to be a major problem), and the only way for this to work in Firefox (31beta3 or below) is to set use_document_fonts=1 (at which point I might as well just open that site in Chrome).

There are several ways this situation can be improved, in increasing order of preference from my perspective:

1) Allow per-website permissions for use_document_fonts and downloadable_fonts.enabled. A crude solution that will only alleviate the problem: I'd still be choosing between two types of ugly (broken icons vs ugly fonts), only won't have to switch browsers between sites.

2) Have downloadable_fonts.enabled take priority over use_document_fonts. Will solve the problem for sites that use downloadable fonts only for icons, but will not improve situation with sites that use downloadable fonts for text.

3) Have downloadable_fonts.enabled take priority over use_document_fonts, but only for certain UCS character categories. Private Use is the obvious starting point, more research can be done to identify other categories that are often used for icons (e.g. Arrows, Geometric Shapes, Box Drawing, etc.).

Comment 1

[[SV Manager] Florin Mezei, QA (:FlorinMezei)]

This to me seems to be bug 789788. Correct me if I'm wrong Dmitry.

Comment 2

[mgambrell]

Some people in that bug tell me that this isnt a duplicate. They insist that the other thread is about user font choices, and not about downloadable_fonts options. See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=789788#c78 

The original bug's text says: `It would be good if the "allow pages to use their own fonts" setting would cover only normal text fonts`

Comment 3

[Dmitry Borodaenko]

The fundamental end-user problem in this bug and 789788 is the same: use_document_fonts=0 breaks sites with icon fonts. The discussion in 789788 seems to have steered in a different direction from the solutions I proposed here, but I am more concerned about solving the problem than the shape the final solution will take, so as long as it addresses that fundamental problem, marking this bug as duplicate is the right decision.

Comment 4

[mgambrell]

Oops, you're right, I misread your bug. I guess I'm the only person wanting to do this by prohibiting downloadable fonts and got over-eager.