1428595 - Fira Sans WOFF2 font doesn't render properly

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

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

Description

[Mayank Bansal]

Attachment: Capture.PNG

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:59.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/59.0
Build ID: 20180106100308

Steps to reproduce:

1.open bugzilla page, example https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=903519
2. See how the names of commentors are overbold.
3. See how the dates of attachments looks wrong.




Actual results:

Seeing this for a couple of days now. Not sure if this is a bugzilla issue, or font issue in firefox


Expected results:

not so

Comment 1

[Mayank Bansal]

Attachment: Capture2.PNG

Comment 2

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

We haven't changed anything about fonts.

Comment 3

[Mayank Bansal]

Attachment: bugzilla_preferences.PNG

my bugzilla preferences

Comment 4

[Mayank Bansal]

Attachment: aboutsupport.txt

about:support of my normal profile

Comment 5

[Mayank Bansal]

Attachment: bug.png

Firefox on top
Chrome on bottom.

Note how all the text in firefox is overbold.

Comment 6

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Maybe bug 1426390 is what changed things?

I've definitely been seeing *different* fonts on Bugzilla the past few days, although I thought it was intentional.  I don't see anything else font-related in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.tools.bmo/JSvAIPzCsp0/tbzzt4g4BAAJ

Comment 7

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Though the way to tell for sure is to compare current Bugzilla in a current nightly build and an old nightly build (from before you saw the change).

Comment 8

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to David Baron :dbaron: ⌚️UTC-8 from comment #6)
> Maybe bug 1426390 is what changed things?

Looking at the commit that landed there, it actually changed a couple of things (not just adding resources in WOFF2 format, as per the bug title):

* Updated the version of the Fira fonts used (Fira Sans bumped from 4.106 to 4.203). Probably not a big deal in itself, as the actual glyph designs didn't generally change significantly; however.....

* Switched the underlying outline format in the fonts (both in the updated WOFF files and the newly-added WOFF2) from TrueType to CFF. This means the glyphs will go through an entirely different rasterizer codepath, and may lead to substantially different rendering even for glyph shapes that are theoretically "the same".

So yes, I think it's very likely bug 1426390 that caused this. The results will vary depending on platform (the exact rasterization of the two different glyph outline types varies considerably between platforms), and on local font-rendering settings (e.g. ClearType tuning settings in Windows, font hinting and smoothing options in Gtk, etc).

Comment 9

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Ah yes, we did changed it. Why I forgot it already... ;) It's just the latest version of Fira Sans in the WOFF2 format so it can happen anywhere outside of Bugzilla.

Comment 10

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Note that the WOFF (1.0) file that was also updated in bug 1426390 contains the exact same CFF-based font resource as the WOFF2, and therefore will presumably render the same. The issue isn't WOFF2 vs WOFF, it's CFF vs TrueType outlines which render differently (on some platforms).

Comment 13

[Mayank Bansal]

Any plans to fix this?

Comment 14

[Mayank Bansal]

ni for comment 13

Comment 15

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

I’m not a graphics engineer, can’t fix it.

Comment 16

[Mayank Bansal]

is it feasible to change the default font on bugzilla then?

Comment 17

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Regardless of this particular bug, I’m planning to use a different font, probably Source Sans Pro, as part of the upcoming redesign. However, as mentioned in Comment 9, the rendering issue should be able to be reproduced on any site using current Fira Sans. So this bug still has to be solved in Firefox side (or the font itself maybe).

Comment 18

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Actually the version used on Bugzilla (4.203) is not the latest (4.301). There are some bug fixes between these releases.

https://github.com/bBoxType/FiraSans

Mayank, can you still reproduce the issue with this demo site? I have Windows 10 on a Parallels VM but don’t see any issue even with the version 4.203.

https://bboxtype.com/typefaces/FiraSans/

Comment 19

[Mayank Bansal]

(In reply to Kohei Yoshino [:kohei] (Bugzilla UX) (FxSiteCompat) from comment #18)
> Actually the version used on Bugzilla (4.203) is not the latest (4.301).
> There are some bug fixes between these releases.
> 
> https://github.com/bBoxType/FiraSans
> 
> Mayank, can you still reproduce the issue with this demo site? I have
> Windows 10 on a Parallels VM but don’t see any issue even with the version
> 4.203.
> 
> https://bboxtype.com/typefaces/FiraSans/

It is difficult to tell from the demo page. 
It looks from the readme,md that FiraSans will not be developed further. All the new work will be going in FireGo. So maybe we should switch to that?

Comment 20

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Yeah we could try FiraGo, but by now I think it’s better to switch over to Source Sans Pro. My plan is to create a new style guide during this holiday season and implement it in January. (Bug 1377977)

Comment 21

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

We have eventually moved from Fira Sans to FiraGO. Is your issue solved?

Comment 22

[Mayank Bansal]

It looks better now

Comment 23

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Awesome. Then we can probably close this Graphics bug since Fira Sans is no longer maintained and it’s apparently not a widespread issue. Thanks for the testing!