1433675 - Firefox is not rendering the font correctly for Devanagari (Indic Font)

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, defect, P3)

Description

[tejaspandey2010]

Attachment: green colour highlight(correct display) and red colour highlight( wrong display)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0
Build ID: 20180123154148

Steps to reproduce:

System Information
1) Operating System - ArchLinux (64 bit)
2) Font Package Used for Devanagari is ttf-indic-otf https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/ttf-indic-otf/

Steps to Reproduce 
First Case
1) Open https://www.google.co.in/
Second Case
2)https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA35FD0BB4504FE6E



Actual results:

First Case
1) Hindi is rendered at very large size at the google home page 
Second Case
2)Tile of the video in the playlist  having text in hindi is in large size and sometimes it is impossible to read.




Expected results:

In the previous version of the firefox devanagri font were correctly shown in size and comprehension.

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to tejaspandey2010 from comment #0)
> In the previous version of the firefox devanagri font were correctly shown
> in size and comprehension.

Could you possibly use the mozregression tool to find which patch introduced this regression?

http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

Comment 2

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Apparently it's using a completely different font for the Devanagari characters. You can use Developer Tools / Inspector to examine one of the Devanagari text elements, and then look at the Fonts panel (to the far right of the Inspector, beyond Rules / Computed / Layout / ...; or if it's not visible then choose it from the drop-down menu there) to see what font is being used.

Once we find out what font is being used, the question is why it is choosing a different font than the previous version (and one that apparently doesn't support Devanagari very well).

Comment 3

[tejaspandey2010]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew (:jfkthame) from comment #2)
> Apparently it's using a completely different font for the Devanagari
> characters. You can use Developer Tools / Inspector to examine one of the
> Devanagari text elements, and then look at the Fonts panel (to the far right
> of the Inspector, beyond Rules / Computed / Layout / ...; or if it's not
> visible then choose it from the drop-down menu there) to see what font is
> being used.
> 
> Once we find out what font is being used, the question is why it is choosing
> a different font than the previous version (and one that apparently doesn't
> support Devanagari very well).

In Firefox-57.0.4 for Devanagari it is using "Gargi-1.2b" Font which is working correctly whereas
In Firefox-58.0 it is using "MUTT ClearlyU Wide"

Comment 4

[tejaspandey2010]

(In reply to Gingerbread Man from comment #1)
> (In reply to tejaspandey2010 from comment #0)
> > In the previous version of the firefox devanagri font were correctly shown
> > in size and comprehension.
> 
> Could you possibly use the mozregression tool to find which patch introduced
> this regression?
> 
> http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

Using Mozregression

40:08.17 INFO: Running autoland build built on 2017-10-27 10:59:29.942000, revision d60b8971
41:11.69 INFO: Launching /tmp/tmpsw5vOU/firefox/firefox
41:11.69 INFO: Application command: /tmp/tmpsw5vOU/firefox/firefox -profile /tmp/tmp6PG9jp.mozrunner
41:11.73 INFO: application_buildid: 20171027103623
41:11.73 INFO: application_changeset: d60b8971ecd96bb95ad77a5656d1dd381178e27a
41:11.73 INFO: application_name: Firefox
41:11.73 INFO: application_repository: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland
41:11.73 INFO: application_version: 58.0a1
Was this inbound build good, bad, or broken? (type 'good', 'bad', 'skip', 'retry', 'back' or 'exit' and press Enter): good
41:38.77 INFO: Narrowed inbound regression window from [3c298256, 42eb6d46] (4 builds) to [d60b8971, 42eb6d46] (2 builds) (~1 steps left)
41:38.77 INFO: No more inbound revisions, bisection finished.
41:38.77 INFO: Last good revision: d60b8971ecd96bb95ad77a5656d1dd381178e27a
41:38.77 INFO: First bad revision: 42eb6d46aa300ec8d7e86f38a5be66a197d83f74
41:38.77 INFO: Pushlog:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=d60b8971ecd96bb95ad77a5656d1dd381178e27a&tochange=42eb6d46aa300ec8d7e86f38a5be66a197d83f74

Comment 5

[tejaspandey2010]

As a workaround forced font selection does the trick and text displayed is in correct size and readable .
Preferences -> Fonts -> Advance Setting -> Fonts For Devanagari -> Gargi-1.2b

Comment 6

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Interesting -- it looks like the nsStaticAtom patch may have affected font selection (maybe related to accessing prefs?) in an unexpected way. Nicholas, can you take a look?

Comment 7

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

I'd also note that if the regression range is a little bit off, bug 1411480 was pretty close to that landing as well.

Comment 8

[Nicholas Nethercote [inactive]]

Apologies, I'm having trouble reproducing.

- I tried to reproduce on my Ubuntu 17.10 machine using a Firefox trunk build.

- I tried https://www.google.co.in/ but I get no text written in Devanagari, presumably because I'm using an en-US build.

- I also tried https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA35FD0BB4504FE6E. I do see some Devanagari text, but when I inspect it the inspector tells me the fonts used are Roboto Medium and FreeSerif.

- I didn't install the ttf-indic-otf font package because I don't know how to do that.

I know very little about both Devanagari and Linux fonts, so presumably one or both of these is blocking me from making progress here.

jkfthame: any suggestions?

Comment 9

[Nicholas Nethercote [inactive]]

One thing that's very suggestive: bug 1413145 is another bug very similar to this one, involving font problems on Arch Linux. It too was bisected down to bug 1411893.

Comment 10

[tejaspandey2010]

(In reply to Nicholas Nethercote [:njn] from comment #8)
> Apologies, I'm having trouble reproducing.
> 
> - I tried to reproduce on my Ubuntu 17.10 machine using a Firefox trunk
> build.
> 
> - I tried https://www.google.co.in/ but I get no text written in Devanagari,
> presumably because I'm using an en-US build.
> 
> - I also tried https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA35FD0BB4504FE6E. I
> do see some Devanagari text, but when I inspect it the inspector tells me
> the fonts used are Roboto Medium and FreeSerif.
> 
> - I didn't install the ttf-indic-otf font package because I don't know how
> to do that.
> 
> I know very little about both Devanagari and Linux fonts, so presumably one
> or both of these is blocking me from making progress here.
> 
> jkfthame: any suggestions?

- Google redirects to different home page as per the country person is accessing the website .

Font Package Download link
- http://www.indlinux.org/downloads/files/indic-otf-0.2.tar.gz
- After extracting the zip file there will be ttf files (which are the font files)
- Font file Gargi-1.2b.ttf which works correctly. 

For installing font in  Ubuntu 
- create .fonts folder in the home directory
- copy the Gargi-1.2b.ttf file to .fonts folder
- refresh the font cache by fc-cache -rv
- To get the list of all fonts installed fc-list.

For Reproduction of the issue
- Sorry I don't have idea to reproduce on Ubuntu 
- Preinstall fonts will be different in archLinux and Ubuntu
- Archlinux has no font available pre install to handle Devanagari characters .

My guess on what is happening
- Gargi Font is still working correctly on Firefox 58.0 so there is no problem in rendering as in previous version of firefox.
- So Logic of selection of the font has changed for a language.

Comment 11

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

To have a chance of reproducing the problem, I guess you'd need to have the "MUTT ClearlyU Wide" font installed (in addition to Gargi), see comment 3. The reporter has both of these; Gargi works correctly, but MUTT ClearlyU doesn't; and for some reason Firefox 58 changes which of the two is being found by default.

I don't know offhand how to install the MUTT ClearlyU fonts on ubuntu for testing; a quick Google search didn't give me an obvious answer.

It does look like this may be a legacy-style bitmap font collection, in which case I'm not surprised Devanagari rendering doesn't work properly (even though glyphs are present), because it won't have the necessary OpenType tables. But I don't know why our font selection behavior would have changed.

Comment 12

[tejaspandey2010]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew (:jfkthame) from comment #11)
> To have a chance of reproducing the problem, I guess you'd need to have the
> "MUTT ClearlyU Wide" font installed (in addition to Gargi), see comment 3.
> The reporter has both of these; Gargi works correctly, but MUTT ClearlyU
> doesn't; and for some reason Firefox 58 changes which of the two is being
> found by default.
> 
> I don't know offhand how to install the MUTT ClearlyU fonts on ubuntu for
> testing; a quick Google search didn't give me an obvious answer.
> 
> It does look like this may be a legacy-style bitmap font collection, in
> which case I'm not surprised Devanagari rendering doesn't work properly
> (even though glyphs are present), because it won't have the necessary
> OpenType tables. But I don't know why our font selection behavior would have
> changed.

I am sharing link to the MUTT ClearlyU Wide https://www.dropbox.com/s/35ltkb8xskg4vsh/cu12.pcf.gz?dl=0

I am new to Bugzilla is there option to attach file in comments.

Comment 13

[tejaspandey2010]

(In reply to tejaspandey2010 from comment #12)
> (In reply to Jonathan Kew (:jfkthame) from comment #11)
> > To have a chance of reproducing the problem, I guess you'd need to have the
> > "MUTT ClearlyU Wide" font installed (in addition to Gargi), see comment 3.
> > The reporter has both of these; Gargi works correctly, but MUTT ClearlyU
> > doesn't; and for some reason Firefox 58 changes which of the two is being
> > found by default.
> > 
> > I don't know offhand how to install the MUTT ClearlyU fonts on ubuntu for
> > testing; a quick Google search didn't give me an obvious answer.
> > 
> > It does look like this may be a legacy-style bitmap font collection, in
> > which case I'm not surprised Devanagari rendering doesn't work properly
> > (even though glyphs are present), because it won't have the necessary
> > OpenType tables. But I don't know why our font selection behavior would have
> > changed.
> 
> I am sharing link to the MUTT ClearlyU Wide
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/35ltkb8xskg4vsh/cu12.pcf.gz?dl=0
> 
> I am new to Bugzilla is there option to attach file in comments.

I have found the link to the package which has installed MUTT ClearlyU Font 
- https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/xorg-fonts-misc/ 
- At the right hand corner of page option Download from the mirror.
- Extract it 
- In the package file is xorg-fonts-misc-1.0.3-5-any.pkg/usr/share/fonts/misc/cu12.pcf.gz

Comment 14

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to tejaspandey2010 from comment #12)
> I am new to Bugzilla is there option to attach file in comments.

It's the other way around: you can include a comment with your attachment. Above the description (comment 0), click the "Attach file" link. This takes you to a page where you can attach your file. At the bottom of that page, you can enter a comment.

Comment 15

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

I tried installing the ClearlyU font on my Ubuntu machine, and can confirm that if I use this for Devanagari text I get broken rendering as in the original screenshot here. But I only see this if I explicitly choose that font; it's not being used by default in place of Gargi, as happened for the reporter. This may be dependent on exactly how the system's fontconfig configuration is set up.