1851278 - Firefox uses Noto instead of Helvetica Neue

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

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

Description

[240-185]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/118.0

Steps to reproduce:

Nothing particular, just let Firefox update itself to v118b3.

OS: Ubuntu 23.04

Actual results:

I set Firefox to display all text in Western alphabet with the font "Helvetica Neue". The font directly comes from my MacBook Pro under macOS 13. I converted the .TTC file to a .TTF file.

Until now, it used to work, but something was broken in the recognization of the font and now it displays all text in Noto instead of Helvetica Neue. As a workaround, I fell back to simple Helvetica.

Expected results:

Display the text in Helvetica Neue, not in Noto.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Layout: Text and Fonts' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Are you running into this issue in a Private Browsing window, by any chance? (Or, do you have "Never Remember History" selected in Firefox preferences? I believe that activates permanent-private-browsing-mode, under the hood.)

If so (particularly if you're seeing this as a new issue in Firefox 118), then you're likely seeing the expected outcome of bug 1849903, also discussed in https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/VlJ1hvCvFE4/m/peYhPjU7BAAJ

And if that's the explanation, then it looks like you can restore the old behavior (if you like) by visiting about:config and toggling the preference privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode to false. Or bug 1852176 comment 2 suggests you can also set layout.css.font-visibility.private to 3 (note, this preference may not exist by default; I think you have to type its name into the about:config search field and then click "Number" and then "+" to create it).

Or: if you're not hitting this in private browsing / "never remember history" mode, please let us know and we can look into it further.

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Sorry, my google groups link was to the wrong post in the thread -- I meant to link to the initial announcement, which was:
https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/VlJ1hvCvFE4/m/uNpfryq3AQAJ
("Intent to ship: Font Visibility Restrictions in private browsing windows")

Comment 4

[240-185]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #3)

Sorry, my google groups link was to the wrong post in the thread -- I meant to link to the initial announcement, which was:
https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/VlJ1hvCvFE4/m/uNpfryq3AQAJ
("Intent to ship: Font Visibility Restrictions in private browsing windows")

It's OK, I was tinkering with the settings you provided in order to change something while reading your first reply.

I had selected "Never Remember History" in the preferences, which automatically enabled Private Browsing.

I then changed it to use custom settings for my history (I don't know how it's named in English as I use Firefox in French), and then the third row telling Firefox to empty the history when it is closed.

From there, old windows started to appear… with the custom font set to that Helvetica Neue font as intended!
Thanks for the suggestion, I would never have thought of it myself.

However, both privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode and layout.css.font-visibility.private were already set to "false" and "3".

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to 240-185 from comment #4)

However, both privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode and layout.css.font-visibility.private were already set to "false" and "3".

Just to be sure -- were you using Firefox 118 beta when you checked that?

The former pref (the pbmode one) is definitely true by default for me in a fresh installation of Firefox Beta. That comes directly from here in the source:
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-beta/rev/030b0a170851ab90f08bd7d4b7012a94c013084e/browser/app/profile/firefox.js#2118-2119

// Enable Fingerprinting Protection in private windows..
pref("privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode", true);

So true should be the default now (and if it's false, that should show up as bold to indicate that it's non-default).

If that doesn't match what you're seeing in Firefox 118, then something is weird...

As for layout.css.font-visibility.private, let's forget about that one -- that doesn't actually show up in about:config for me at all, and I think it's a bit surprising if it shows up for you -- perhaps you were looking at layout.css.font-visibility (the version without the .private suffix)? But anyway, after some further digging, I think the .private version of this preference was removed in https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/f29e7cc4d688#l2.28 , and the suggestion from bug 1852176 comment 2 wasn't aware of that.

So: bottom line, I think privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode is the main thing to toggle now (or alternately: just not using permanent private-browsing-mode, as you discovered.)

And it seems we sorted things out and things are generally working-as-intended here, aside from the clarification about whether privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode is really defaulting to true or false for you.

Comment 6

[240-185]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #5)

(In reply to 240-185 from comment #4)

However, both privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode and layout.css.font-visibility.private were already set to "false" and "3".

Just to be sure -- were you using Firefox 118 beta when you checked that?
I realized after having sent my previous comment that I was checking these preferences on a PC which had Fx117 on it.

That's why I had to rush towards my other Linux PC which I was sure it was using Fx118b5 in order to confirm it, but I had forgotten that I also wrote this.
I can confirm that "privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode" was set to "true" in Fx118b5 (now b6, it updated during my checks). I reverted it back to "false".

I'm a munchkin.

Comment 7

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to 240-185 from comment #6)

I can confirm that "privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode" was set to "true" in Fx118b5 (now b6, it updated during my checks). I reverted it back to "false".

Thanks! I'll close this as "invalid" then since it seems like things are working-as-intended per bug 1849903.

Also: it looks like there's a more-targeted way to relax this font restriction, described in bug 1852239 comment 3:

You can just disable fingerprinting protection for fonts by setting privacy.fingerprintingProtection.overrides to the string
-FontVisibilityLangPack

(Note the leading "-" there, as part of the string value.)

You might try doing that and restoring privacy.fingerprintingProtection.pbmode to its original value, so that you can benefit from other sorts of fingerprinting protection that we might enable in private browsing windows.