1671660 - [macOS 11] Variable fonts are broken

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Graphics: WebRender, defect)

Description

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Attachment: before

On Big Sur, the latest Nightly has changed the way system fonts look in some places, for example the tab text, the url bar text, or the text on github.

Comment 1

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Attachment: after

Comment 2

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

The starkest difference is in the percentage glyph, see the last line of the github comment.
These San Francisco fonts come in multiple variants, and some APIs choose the variant based on the font size. I think what's happening is that the content process has chosen a different variant for the text layout than WebRender chose for the glyph rendering.

Comment 3

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

It seems the patch also broke font variations:

• The horse is no longer running: https://www.axis-praxis.org/playground/horse/
• Dragging the slider on https://v-fonts.com/ doesn't do anything.

Comment 4

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

Attachment: Try to fix it

Comment 5

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Attachment: Bug 1671660 - Use CFNumber for the axis keys in the font variation dictionary. r=jrmuizel

It seems that, starting with Big Sur, CTFontDescriptorCreateCopyWithAttributes
(and similar functions) no longer accepts axis names as the attribute dictionary
keys. Instead, the dictionary keys need to be CFNumbers of the axis tag.

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/431f3b75086b
Use CFNumber for the axis keys in the font variation dictionary. r=jrmuizel

Comment 7

[Dorel Luca [:dluca]]

Backed out changeset 431f3b75086b (bug 1671660) for Build bustage. CLOSED TREE

Logs:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=318901507&repo=autoland&lineNumber=45688

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#?job_id=318901546&repo=autoland

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#?job_id=318901527&repo=autoland

Push with failures:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=autoland&group_state=expanded&revision=431f3b75086b61509dc3fa6a892c81c23e402074

Backout:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8186e7bcab0cef9264b8c68b7ed5831fbe9fd97a

Comment 8

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Sorry, missed that "unused variable" compiler warning when I built locally.

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/f986cf8131c6
Use CFNumber for the axis keys in the font variation dictionary. r=jrmuizel

Comment 10

[Razvan Maries]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f986cf8131c6