120913 - RFE: Should be able to use another font for ASCII characters

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Internationalization, enhancement)

Description

[Koike Kazuhiko]

ASCII characters in Japanese text are displayed with Japanese font.
But it's better if they can be displayed with another font.
For example, Courier for ASCII characters and Shinonome for Japanese
characters.

Original report in Bugzilla-jp:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.gr.jp/show_bug.cgi?id=1080

Comment 1

[Roy Yokoyama]

I think this is true for all platforms.

reporter: I am not sure if this is a valid request; but
are we forcing ASCII chars to use Western font all the time?

momoi-san: is this a valid request? W3C standard?

assigning to ftang to get assessment and cc momoi-san,shanjian-san

Comment 2

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

I think it might be best to separate the issues into
Unix on the one hand and Mac/Windows on the other. I think
we used to mix Unix fonts between Western and Japanese
on a Japanese document. This report is a request to revive 
that treatment. Maybe this is true for Unix fonts in that 
Western glyphs included in Japanese X fonts don't look all
that good. 

On Windows and Mac, Japanese fonts contain ASCII glyphs that match
fairly well in height and width to the Japanese ones. I'm not sure 
if we should change that now.

Brian, have we done anything lately to improve ASCII and Japanese
glyph proportions on Unix?

Comment 3

[kill this account]

Font abilities/resources on X/Mac/Win are very different so I agree with 
Momoi-san that we should always consider this difference when discussing
fonts.

Since I cannot read the text in 
http://bugzilla.mozilla.gr.jp/show_bug.cgi?id=1080 
could someone summarize the important points?

Is the width of roman chars in Japanese fonts the concern?

Is the attractiveness of roman chars in Japanese fonts the concern?

Will all Japanese readers want the same thing of will we need to
provide a way to customize it on a per user basis?

Comment 4

[takagix]

Attachment: translation of bugzilla.mozilla.gr.jp #1080

this is Japanese->English translation of
http://bugzilla.mozilla.gr.jp/show_bug.cgi?id=1080

Comment 5

[Shanjian Li]

We could use "lang" attribute to resolve this problem for certain web pages. For
example, 
instead of 
<p> 日本語文字
<p> English words 
<p> 日本語文字
Users could write:
<p> 日本語文字
<p lang=en> English words 
<p> 日本語文字
Since lang attribute applies to almost any tags, this should be the ideal
solution for users. 
If this is a big concern for viewers instead of authors, we certainly could add
ascii font in japanese font list. But I would use a preference to control this
because this is not theoritically correct. 

Comment 6

[kill this account]

This is a messy one.

Some people what moz to use all Japanese glyphs on a Japanese page.

Some people what moz to some Latin and some Japanese glyphs on a Japanese page.

Hard to say there is a "right" answer to this as it really is a preference.

Comment 7

[Frank Tang]

I saw this one long long long time ago (when we ship Netscape 1.0 and 2.0)
But in that time the font for window 3.1 j is bad. I thought the problem go away
after Win95. 

cc bobj. bobj should remember the decision that we drop the effort for this kind
of issue. 
mark it future

Comment 8

[kill this account]

Would using an alias be a possible solution?

Comment 9

[kill this account]

this bug seems related to bug 91145

Comment 10

[bobj]

As Kat mentions in comment #2, Unix works differently than Win and Mac.
Previous Unix implementations used an iso8859-1 font for the ASCII range in
Japanese documents, but I believe this was changed to use a JIS201 font (I
don't recall why - Brian?).  On Win and Mac we have always selected a single
font for all characters in a Japanese document including those in the ASCII
range.

This would be a really nice enhancement because often the ASCII range
characters in CJK fonts look pretty bad.

Prior to Mozilla/Netscape6, our font architecture was less flexible and using
multiple fonts for different encodings was not easy to do.  It may be easier
to implement the new mozilla font subsystem.

Comment 11

[kill this account]

I don't know. 

Did Moz/NS6 every use iso8859-1 for the ascii range of Japanese? 

Did it work differently before May 15, 2001 (could this be a side effect 
of bug 69139?)

Comment 12

[Masaki Katakai]

Yes, actually Mozilla did use iso8859-1 as ascii even when the doc and locale
is Japanese. After the fix of bug 69139, we try looking for language group's
font first, jisx0201, jisx0208, .... for japanese language group. So jisx0201
fonts are matched before iso8859-1 and being used. I belive
this is correct behavior. However, yes, the behavior has been changed from
early version of Mozilla and Netscape Communicator 4.x so Japanese users
are confused and some users still want to use 8859-1 fonts as ascii part.
Because most unix/linux platform do not have good jisx0201 fonts.

Comment 13

[kill this account]

Sounds like there are 2 right answers. Perhaps we need a pref and UI.

Comment 14

[Frank Tang]

what a hack. I have not touch mozilla code for 2 years. I didn't read these bugs
for 2 years. And they are still there. Just close them as won't fix to clean up.

Comment 15

[Travis Chase]

Mass Re-open of Frank Tangs Won't fix debacle. Spam is his responsibility not my own

Comment 16

[Travis Chase]

Mass Re-assinging Frank Tangs old bugs that he closed won't fix and had to be
re-open. Spam is his fault not my own

Comment 17

[Hideo Oshima]

I think it is not necessary to fix this.
We can achieve this feature by fontconfig.

Comment 18

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

Sure.

We don't need to fix this request.