233114 - Letters misrendered if Microsoft Symbol font is installed (with Windows)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: MathML, defect)

Description

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

BUILD: everything going back to about a year ago

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1)  Install the Microsoft Symbol font (if on Windows, it should be preinstalled,
    if on Linux, go and get it).
2)  Start up Mozilla
3)  Go to http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/demo/texvsmml.xhtml
4)  Look at the rendering of "elsewhere" in test #18

EXPECTED RESULTS:  Text saying "elsewhere"

ACTUAL RESULTS:  Text saying
"epsilon-lambda-sigma-epsilon-omega-eta-epsilon-rho-epsilon"

Removing the Symbol font from the font path or from the mathml.css rule for the
<math> element makes the problem go away.

What gives, exactly?  Isn't this exactly what _shouldn't_ happen with the Symbol
font?  This is not a <font face="Symbol"> setup....

Comment 1

[rbs]

Looks like the kind of funny things that happens when the Symbol font lies to be
iso-8859-1.

Have you installed TtH/TtM? It tends to override Symbol.
http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/Xfonts.html
http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/Wfonts.html

Comment 2

[Jungshik Shin]

> Looks like the kind of funny things that happens when the 
> Symbol font lies to be iso-8859-1.

Indeed. I don't have any problem with Symbol. 

> http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/Wfonts.html

The page has the following :
> At the bottom, the line
> encoding.wingdings.ttf = windows-1252
> serves exactly the same purpose of enabling the wingdings font.

That's not true any more as we know well. The page seems to be outdated.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> The two relevant fonts.dir entries I have are:

symbol.ttf -monotype-Symbol-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
symbol.ttf -monotype-Symbol-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-microsoft-symbol

> Have you installed TtH/TtM?

No.  I don't really care about the symbol problem in practice, as long as we're
doing the right thing (my solution will be to simply deinstall this font).

Comment 4

[rbs]

                                                         vvvvvvvv
symbol.ttf -monotype-Symbol-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
symbol.ttf -monotype-Symbol-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-microsoft-symbol
                                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ah, these should be 'fontspecific' (to say that they have a 'custom' encoding),
as is the case with the TeX or Mathematica fonts. 

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

OK.

So what about Windows?  I can't test this there, but Hendikins was seeing the
same problem....

Comment 6

[tenthumbs]

It's only the iso10646-1 entry that causes problems. Do xfd -fn '...' and you'll
see how the X server maps this. I would ask why mozilla chooses this particular
font.

Comment 7

[Jungshik Shin]

You're saying that '..symbol.....iso10646-1' has alpha for 'a', beta for 'b',
etc, right?  it's not a mozilla bug but an XFree86 bug. I'll file a bug on
XFree86 if you confirm it.
 
Why does Mozlla (X11core build) pick up that particular font? That can't be
explained in a few words, I'm afraid. It depends on many different factors. 

Comment 8

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Guys, the Linux problem is moot at this point.  See comment 5

Comment 9

[rbs]

It shows up on Windows if/when the mapping of the Symbol font is changed in
fontEncoding.properties. So, I can only suspect that this is the case. It
happens through the TtM thing:

http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/Wfonts.html
Although it is outdated, people who follow these instructions trigger the problem.

Comment 10

[Jungshik Shin]

I and rbs have no problem on Windows. My comment #2 was about Windows.

Comment 11

[Frédéric Wang (:fredw)]

Setting this bug as closeme, since it is probably one of the old font issues that have been fixed since Karl's work.

Comment 12

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

WFM too.