1166613 - Default sans-serif font for zh-CN on Windows XP back to SimSun

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

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

Description

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

Please consider partially revert the changes made in bug 1096800, keep sans-serif default as Microsoft YaHei on Windows Vista+, while revert sans-serif default to SimSun on Windows XP.

Beijing office received multiple user complaints about this change. SimHei doesn't render very well and it looks like IE on Windows XP defaults to use SimSun. I'll attach some screenshots for reference later.

Also, zh-CN is not the only locale where the default font family is sans-serif but the default sans-serif fonts are actually serif fonts. zh-HK, zh-TW also have identical font.name-list.{sans-serif,serif} prefs, and I believe MingLiU_HKSCS/PMingLiu are also serif fonts. I cannot find the reasoning behind these, though.

Firefox defaults sans-serif to SimSun since a decade ago[1][2] and it works (kinda) well when the majority of users are using Windows XP. Please re-consider the relevant changes. Thanks.

[1]: https://bugzil.la/95227
[2]: https://bugzil.la/92817

Comment 1

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

Attachment: Screenshot of Baidu search result in Fx 38 on Windows XP (using SimHei)

Comment 2

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

Attachment: Screenshot of Baidu search result in IE 8 on Windows XP (using SimSun)

Comment 3

[Duan Yao]

It looks like Baidu search(https://www.baidu.com/) specifies neither "sans-serif" nor "serif", instead it uses "arial":

body, th, td, .p1, .p2 {
    font-family: arial;
}

However Arial doesn't contains Chinese glyphs, so the actual font for Chinese fallback to browser's default font.

So I think it is not the problem of mapping sans-serif to SimHei on XP & zh-CN, but the problem of default font of FF on XP & zh-CN. Changing the default font of FF on XP & zh-CN to Serif or SimSun is the right way, I think.

Comment 4

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

Resolve this as WONTFIX since this is only necessary for WinXP and its support ends tomorrow.