1341726 - Some unicode characters (U+007F, U+0085) show tofu (empty boxes/hex code)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

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

Description

[Stebs]

Attachment: U+007F_Nightly.png

Not sure if this is generally a site error (see Bug 943334), but while Nightly versions show tofu, Firefox Release versions (from Arch Linux) show no tofu/blank, which is way less obtrusive (I see it on real Websites (spiegel.de) from time to time).

U+007F = DELETE (last character):
http://jrgraphix.net/r/Unicode/0020-007F

U+0085 = NEXT LINE (also last character):
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0085/browsertest.htm

Attached are comparison of Firefox 51 vs Nightly (Build ID 20170222110216 Linux x86_64)

Comment 1

[Stebs]

Attachment: U+007F_ff51.png

Comment 2

[Stebs]

Attachment: U+0085_Nightly.png

Comment 3

[Stebs]

Attachment: U+0085_ff51.png

Comment 4

[Loic]

It's reproducible in Nighty and Aurora probably because an experimental pref is enabled by default, but not in Beta or Release (due to remaining issues surely).

Comment 5

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

This is controlled by the pref layout.css.control-characters.visible, which defaults to true on developer channels but currently false on release. The CSS WG resolved a while back that such characters should be made visible, not hidden, but the plan was for browsers to coordinate a switch to that behavior. I think it's still behind a flag in Chrome, last I heard...

If you see these in real content on sites (as mentioned in comment 0), it's a website error, usually due to getting encodings mixed up somewhere in their editing or content management processes.

See also bug 1329613.

Comment 6

[Stebs]

Ah, thanks for explaining it!
Perhaps this helps others who stumble on the same "problem" and now know they don't have to file a bug (against Firefox).