1179055 - Adobe Type 1 (PS1) Fonts not displaying in Thunderbird messages

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics: Text, defect, P3)

Description

[Mark Wilhelm]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150525141253

Steps to reproduce:

Just updated T'bird to v. 38.0.1.  Now fonts that I have been using for years in T'bird don't display either in messages received or in new messages.  Just looked them up, and they are Adobe fonts.


Actual results:

Discovered the problem when I received messages replying to mine after manually upgrading to 38.0.1.  Incoming messages had the text from the sender, but only blank space in the message I had sent.  I can select text with cursor, copy it to a text editor, and the text is there.  This is also happening when I try to send messages: had set one of the Adobe fonts (Palatino) as default, but typing in message window produced blanks.  When font changed, could type.  Now cannot read messages received previously.


Expected results:

Whatever fonts I have in my system, that work with Windows, should work in Thunderbird.  Really.

Comment 1

[Mark Wilhelm]

Fonts that will not display are Adobe Type 1 fonts.  All TrueType fonts seem to work.

Comment 2

[:aceman]

Do those fonts work in Firefox 38+? Can you compose a simple HTML page using them and are they displayed fine?

When you compose a message in TB, are those fonts available in the font selector in HTML compose mode?

Comment 3

[Mark Wilhelm]

The fonts do not display in 38.0.1, which TB tells me is up to date.  They did work in the version from which I updated to 38 - can't remember the version number, but it was fairly recent.

When I compose a message in TB, these fonts do appear in the font selector, but typing doesn't appear when they are selected.  The cursor moves, so the characters are being created, but I can't see them.  I'm not sure I know how to compose an HTML page, but isn't that what I'm doing when typing in TB?  Apparently the recipients of my messages sent in those fonts can see them, but when they reply I can't see the replies.  I can select the reply messages from recipients and paste them into a text editor, and read them, but that's a rather kludgy workaround.  If I can't see what I've typed I really can't send messages.

Fortunately I have lots of other fonts, but my favorites are the Type 1 fonts.

Comment 4

[Mark Wilhelm]

(In reply to :aceman from comment #2)
> Do those fonts work in Firefox 38+? Can you compose a simple HTML page using
> them and are they displayed fine?
> 
> When you compose a message in TB, are those fonts available in the font
> selector in HTML compose mode?

I posted my reply to this as "comment 3" on the bug report page - did you see it?

Comment 5

[Jerry]

I have had same problem, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1179055   bug 1179055

Thanks for identifying Type1 fonts as key to the issue.

I suspected that either TB 38.0.1 doesn't know where the fonts are stored, OR that the graphics engine has been revised in a way that Type 1 fonts are not processed.

I don't know enough about the graphics processor--if that is the correct term--and I don't know where in TB the font lists are stored; in css?

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

perhaps jdaggett will know somethign about this

Comment 8

[Jerry]

I confirmed that fonts that do NOT display are Adobe Postscript Type 1; fonts that DO display are True Type.

I created a test html file with an example of Adobe Postscript Type 1, i.e., Optima Demibold.

The text is NOT viewed in Mozilla Firefox.

It IS viewed in Google Chrome.

Does this help diagnose?

For me, this is not a trivial issue, since I have thousands of SENT emails which is basically my database for correspondence on issues of importance to me.

Comment 9

[Jerry]

Rendering engine issues? Any changes in Gecko for 38.0.1 that could explain the problem? I am in pretty deep water here so need input.

Comment 10

[Mark Wilhelm]

(In reply to Jerry from comment #9)
> Rendering engine issues? Any changes in Gecko for 38.0.1 that could explain
> the problem? I am in pretty deep water here so need input.

I'm in the same boat - hundreds, thousands of old emails I can no longer read.  I can select the text and copy it to a text editor and read it there, but that's way too much effort to get at the stuff.

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

reference bug 1105807 comment 9

Comment 12

[Kent James (:rkent)]

Do we have (or can we get) a sample email posted that we can look at? bug 1105807 comment 9 implies this is supposed to work, so perhaps the fix would be easy if we could reproduce.

Comment 13

[Mark Wilhelm]

I'm not entirely sure how to upload an email message, which if I understand how this all works each message is added to a big file under T'bird, and anyway I'm not sure this will work for anyone who doesn't have the Type 1 Palatino font, but I'm willing.  I should mention that people receiving my messages, who I imagine are using some mail application other than T'bird, can read them.  When they reply, their messages have some legible parts, where they have typed something using their native font, but anything they have added in the text I sent - comments - apparently is in my font and doesn't display.  That's true even when they have changed the color.


So, does anybody have a way for me to upload a message for review?  I could forward a representative sample to somebody's email address, I suppose.  Sorry, I really can't upload the entire message files.

Comment 14

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to Kent James (:rkent) from comment #12)
> Do we have (or can we get) a sample email posted that we can look at? bug
> 1105807 comment 9 implies this is supposed to work, so perhaps the fix would
> be easy if we could reproduce.

The problem isn't the particular email, it's the legacy type1 fonts. So any investigation/debugging depends on having those fonts installed; then it should be possible to reproduce the problem (in either firefox or thunderbird) by styling a page or message appropriately.

I don't think Windows ships with any such fonts as standard, so reproducing the problem will be dependent on installing third-party fonts in the .pfb/.pfm format.

Uninstalling all such fonts, and/or changing message styling or font preferences such that they're not being used, should be a way to work around the issue -- but clearly we have a platform bug, users shouldn't be encountering this kind of issue at all.

Comment 15

[Mark Wilhelm]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew (:jfkthame) from comment #14)
> (In reply to Kent James (:rkent) from comment #12)
> > Do we have (or can we get) a sample email posted that we can look at? bug
> > 1105807 comment 9 implies this is supposed to work, so perhaps the fix would
> > be easy if we could reproduce.
> 
> The problem isn't the particular email, it's the legacy type1 fonts. So any
> investigation/debugging depends on having those fonts installed; then it
> should be possible to reproduce the problem (in either firefox or
> thunderbird) by styling a page or message appropriately.
> 
> I don't think Windows ships with any such fonts as standard, so reproducing
> the problem will be dependent on installing third-party fonts in the
> .pfb/.pfm format.
> 
> Uninstalling all such fonts, and/or changing message styling or font
> preferences such that they're not being used, should be a way to work around
> the issue -- but clearly we have a platform bug, users shouldn't be
> encountering this kind of issue at all.

Good summary.  I've had these fonts in my systems for over ten years, and Windows has been great about transferring them along with everything else every time I've bought new systems.  So Windows/MS is handling the fonts just fine, and they work in every other application I use, well, with the notable exception of my CADD software, which only recognizes TT fonts.  So I really think the problem is in the Mozilla graphics engine.

Comment 16

[Jerry]

I could loan out copies of a couple of Type 1 fonts if that will help. Where to send them?

Re last paragraph in comment 14: Changing the default font does not impact copies of "sent" messages, although it works for new messages. The email remembers the original font.

Too bad there isn't code like in a css file that specifies a preferred and alternative fonts, i.e., GreatFont, MediumFont, LittleFont so that if GreatFont is not present, the text will still display.

And please double check, where does TB look for fonts?

Comment 17

[Kent James (:rkent)]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew (:jfkthame) from comment #14)
> 
> The problem isn't the particular email, it's the legacy type1 fonts. So any
> investigation/debugging depends on having those fonts installed; then it
> should be possible to reproduce the problem (in either firefox or
> thunderbird) by styling a page or message appropriately.
> 

I understand that, but in order to do any investigation of the issue, I need to have a clear STR. "Now fonts that I have been using for years in T'bird don't display either in messages received or in new messages." does not help me.

Are you saying that before I can reproduce the bug, I need to have these fonts installed locally?

You have to understand that I have to deal with a very wide variety of issues, I know little about fonts, so STR written for dummies is what I would need to look at this.

Comment 18

[Jerry]

Jonathan, at the risk of repeating, may I sum up in hope of being helpful:

Type 1 fonts displayed in TB on my system until I upgraded to TB 38.0.1

Email texts from my "sent" folders that were created using Type1 fonts don't display the text. But the text can be displayed by doing a forward and formatting in a different TrueType font. 

A test html file with text using the Type 1 font created in another program cannot be read in Firefox, but can be read in Google Chrome.

My system has font files in more than one location, hence I wonder if some trivial change in code in TB causes TB not to find the Type1 font files which earlier TB versions could find?

Otherwise, since Gecko is common to both TB and Firefox, is there a recent change in Gecko?

From Wikipedia, type 1 fonts  .pfb/.pfm (two files needed for each typeface): Type 1 (also known as PostScript, PostScript Type 1, PS1, T1 or Adobe Type 1) is the font format for single-byte digital fonts for use with Adobe Type Manager software and with PostScript printers. It can support font hinting.

It was originally a proprietary specification, but Adobe released the specification to third-party font manufacturers provided that all Type 1 fonts adhere to it.

Type 1 fonts  are natively supported in Mac OS X, and in Windows XP and later via the GDI API. (They are not supported in the Windows GDI+, WPF or DirectWrite APIs.)

TrueType .ttf is an outline font standard developed by Apple and Microsoft in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on both the Mac OS and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Comment 19

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to Jerry from comment #18)
> Jonathan, at the risk of repeating, may I sum up in hope of being helpful:
> 
> Type 1 fonts displayed in TB on my system until I upgraded to TB 38.0.1
> 
> Email texts from my "sent" folders that were created using Type1 fonts don't
> display the text. But the text can be displayed by doing a forward and
> formatting in a different TrueType font. 
> 
> A test html file with text using the Type 1 font created in another program
> cannot be read in Firefox, but can be read in Google Chrome.
> 
> My system has font files in more than one location, hence I wonder if some
> trivial change in code in TB causes TB not to find the Type1 font files
> which earlier TB versions could find?
> 
> Otherwise, since Gecko is common to both TB and Firefox, is there a recent
> change in Gecko?

Yes, I'm virtually sure this (and bug 1105807, the Firefox version of the same problem) is a result of a Gecko change. So it needs debugging at the Gecko text-rendering level. It doesn't help that probably only a minority of Gecko developers are on Windows, and of those, I'd guess that probably very few (if any) have old Type 1 fonts installed. I was hoping maybe jdaggett would have some on hand.....

The other thing that would be helpful would be a specific regression range. For the Firefox version of the problem (bug 1105807), at least, the mozregression tool[1] could be used to find this.


[1] http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

Comment 20

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Never mind looking for a regression range, actually; someone did that already, in bug 1105807. The problem was triggered by the changes in bug 985220. Both Firefox and TB are equally affected, as it's a bug in Gecko; it only affects Windows users for whom Direct2D hardware acceleration is NOT in use (e.g. because of unsupported hardware or bad driver versions), and who are using legacy Type 1 fonts, not TrueType or OpenType. (I guess it might affect bitmap .fon fonts, too, if anyone still uses those.)

Comment 21

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

I believe the patch now awaiting review in bug 1105807 will fix this.

Comment 22

[Jerry]

Great! I assume if it tests out, we'll see the results in coming releases...Great collaborative work. What a team! Thanks to all.

Comment 23

[u279076]

This should have been fixed when bug 1105807 landed in Gecko 41. Please confirm if this still reproduces in the latest Thunderbird.

Comment 24

[Alin Ilea, Desktop QA]

Closing this as resolved:wfm since the last comment from 6 years ago states it have been fixed and no other comments were added since. Please feel free to reopen it if anyone can still reproduce the issue.