327879 - Firefox under Linux draws text in an invisible font. Highlighting does not make text appear, but you can see text should be there.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[NorthMan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060216 Firefox/1.6a1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060216 Firefox/1.6a1

I am not talking about black text on black background.

Basically, some sites have text that Firefox will not render. Also, "highlighting it" shows a strange behavior...the text does not appear, rather, your highlighting shows up, but it is as if you are highlighting just a bunch of spaces.


I've noticed this sometimes before on websites that say like "Here is the code", and then they post the code, and you see where the text should be, but it's not there. If you highlight it, it gets highlighted, but it still doesn't appear.

Recently I've started noticing this a lot more. One of the sites I recently hit that has the problem is http://store.2600.com 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Goto store.2600.com.
2.  Below "2600 Hacker Quarterly" and above "NEW: BROADCAST QUALITY" should be some text, but text does not appear.


Actual Results:  
Text is rendered/draw, but in an invisible font.  Highlighting it is possible, the colors get inverted, but the text does not appear.

Using a "zap colors" javascript bookmarklet to convert all text to black and the background to white does not make the text appear either.

Expected Results:  
Text appears.

I have seen this on an increasing amount of web pages.  Especially I'll see something like this:

Oh yeah, here is that bash command:
[what looks like a blank line, but just has invisible text]
Next line of article.

The funny thing is that I don't think this was broken on 1.0.x, but I could be wrong.

This is reproducable under Linux on both Firefox 1.5 (using safe mode), AND the 20060216 Firefox 1.6a1 nightly (using safe mode), as well as several earlier nightlies from the past week or two.

Comment 1

[NorthMan]

Attachment: Screenshot of invisible text and effect of highlighting

Screenshot.

Comment 2

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060219 Firefox/1.6a1 ID:2006021922
I can see the text, beginning with: Welcome to... and ending with: ... unique world of 2600.

Comment 3

[NorthMan]

You are not using Linux.

As this bug clearly states in the OS, user-agent, and bug report, this is a Linux bug.

I also see that this ironically works fine under Windows.

Comment 4

[NorthMan]

http://aymanh.com/tips-to-secure-linux-workstation

Found this page that also shows the behavior.  However, in this behavior, which is probably caused by the same thing, it looks like a Freedom of Information Censor went through and highlighted over everything.

I am attaching two screenshots to show the bug on the original page, and on this page as well.

Comment 5

[NorthMan]

Attachment: Screenshot of bug on second page that I found

mm...I already attached a screenshot for the original page I reported on.

One interesting thing to note, is that although if you simply look at the page you cannot see the text, if you use a "zap colors" bookmarklet the text does not appear, but if you copy and paste somehow the text shows up in the clipboard.

Comment 6

[NorthMan]

Another URL:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39256251,00.htm

The only text that displays is "Ubuntu Gains Another Accolade".  The entire story, the "ALSO IN NEWS" section, the "MUST READ SOFTWARE" section, and "SOFTWARE FEATURES", and all the text in the boxes going down the right of the page are all are painted with invisible text.

Confirmed on 1.5.0.1 as well as the 20060308 Firefox trunk build.

Other text on the page shows up, such as the "Ubuntu Gains..." and the "Search Sponsors" near the bottom, as well as some "Sponsored Links" at the very bottom.

Comment 7

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

I'm seeing those problems now also on current windows trunk build. I think this may all be cairo specific (apparently cairo was switched on earlier under Linux?)

Should be fixed when bug 324706 gets fixed.

Comment 8

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Attachment: testcase

At zdnet, not only the font is invisible, also the layout is distorted.

I've tried to minimise the issue. It seems that with certain fonts, currently the layout can be influenced in a different way.

Comment 9

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

I can't reproduce this with a linux gecko 1.9 nightly; all the pages and test cases have the fonts showing up fine.  What do you have set as your default monospace font?  It seems to be font selection related for sure.

Also, are you sure that you can reproduce it with 1.5, a 2.0 nightly, and a trunk nightly (which should be cairo/pango-based?)?

Comment 10

[NorthMan]

I saw the other bug (the one this depends on) where they checked in a hack that would change the fonts the Firefox would use to render the page.

Based on your comment, I thought this would be cleared up, but I just downloaded Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060406 Firefox/1.6a1.
I'm not sure this is "trunk" or "2.0" nightly, but all the test pages still look the same.

Maybe the workaround code isn't in the 0406 build, but in any case yes I did test it in everything I said I tested it in at the times I said I tried it.  This profile has only been used with nightlies.

Comment 11

[Daniel C]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060407 Firefox/3.0a1

This WFM.

Comment 12

[NorthMan]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060408 Firefox/3.0a1

Just downloaded this probably Cairo-enabled build.  store.2600.com looked the same, so I figure the others would too.

My default monospace font is "monospace" (I'm serious).  Also, the "let websites use their own font instead of my selections above) is checked, and I've never touched any of these font settings in Firefox.

Comment 13

[Mathieu Pellerin]

Maybe relates to Bug 367884

Comment 14

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

This is worksforme, using:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a2pre) Gecko/20070129 Minefield/3.0a2pre
on the testcase and the urls.

Comment 15

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

This happens with bitmap fonts.  At some sizes they show, others they don't.
(Cycling through Ctrl-+ Ctrl-- is interesting.)
This is a major issue as our default fonts for en are currently bitmap.
The symptoms are very similar to some reported in bug 324706.

Comment 16

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

The problem stems from not using cairo's configure, which would have set the preprocessor symbol HAVE_FT_BITMAP_SIZE_Y_PPEM appropriately for _cairo_ft_unscaled_font_set_scale.

Comment 17

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

Attachment: implement freetype stuff from cairo's configure in mozilla's configure

Comment 18

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

This also enables FT_GlyphSlot_Embolden for bug 333126.

Comment 19

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Checked that patch in.

Comment 20

[JD]

It seems this bug regressed in: 
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a8pre) Gecko/2007082110 Minefield/3.0a8pre ID:2007082110 

and the 20070820 and 20070821 daily builds

Comment 21

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

(In reply to comment #20)
> It seems this bug regressed in: 
> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a8pre) Gecko/2007082110
> Minefield/3.0a8pre ID:2007082110 
> 
> and the 20070820 and 20070821 daily builds

Do you mean between 20070820 was displaying bitmap fonts for you?
And 20070821 is not?  These are nightly binaries I assume?

Where did Gecko/2007082110 come from?
Did you build it yourself?

What version of freetype do you have?  (freetype-config --ftversion)

Comment 22

[JD]

sorry, 20070820 WAS displaying bitmap fonts for me and everything past that (20070821) was not.

Gecko/2007082110 was from the latest hourly build in which bitmap fonts still were not being displayed. Also, i did not build it myself (as you can probably tell).

The version of Freetype on my system is: 2.3.5

Comment 23

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

(In reply to comment #22)

Thanks for clarifying.

> sorry, 20070820 WAS displaying bitmap fonts for me and everything past that
> (20070821) was not.
> 
> Also, i did not build it myself (as you can probably tell).

(I guess I should have worked that out from the ID:2007082110.)
 
> The version of Freetype on my system is: 2.3.5

I've installed freetype-2.3.5 here (Gentoo) but I'm not able to reproduce.

What distribution are you using?
What is their freetype package version number?

A specific font that is failing might be helpful.  In fact, what would be most helpful is putting FC_DEBUG=3 in the environment and recording stdout from a run
viewing a smallish failing page.  Would you be able to run something like

  env FC_DEBUG=3 /path/to/minefield/firefox --no-remote \
  http://site.name/problem/page > log

and attach the log, please?

Comment 24

[JD]

Ths distro that i'm using is Debian Unstable (sid), the freetype package names are: libfreetype6 and libfreetype6-dev (both are installed) and the versions are both: 2.3.5-1+b1. I did that command I'm about to attach the log, but it seems to be about 87,000 lines.

Comment 25

[JD]

Also, here are screenshots illustrating the problem: First, in minefield where i'm having the issue:
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/3949/screenshotrevision3minemc3.png

In Firefox (Swiftweasel actually) 2.0.0.6 where the site's working, how the site SHOULD look:
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/9659/screenshotrevision3swifch2.png

Comment 26

[JD]

Sorry for all the messages, but i can't post the log here...the filesize is about 51MB....If you believe that's normal size and i should still upload it, let me know and i'll upload it to my webhost or Rapidshare or somewhere like that. Also, other sites that are having this issue are digg.com, revision3.com, yahoo.com, cnn.com. The only site i tried that isn't having this issue is google.com. 

Comment 27

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

(In reply to comment #26)
Sorry I hadn't worked out that it would be that big.  If you have a site with fewer fonts it may come down to about 15M.  FC_DEBUG=1 should give a much smaller size and may have enough information.  Perhaps try that first and I'll ask you if I need more.

Comment 28

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

(In reply to comment #25)
> Also, here are screenshots illustrating the problem: First, in minefield where
> i'm having the issue:
> http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/3949/screenshotrevision3minemc3.png

Thanks for all the info.  Bug 390787 is making the situation worse, and hard to narrow down.  If you cover part of the document window with another window some of it should display.  Changing font preferences may also provide a partial workaround.

Perhaps I'll work on sorting out 390787 and then this might be easier to narrow down.

Comment 29

[JD]

Attachment: FC_DEBUG=1 log from jdhore

This is the log from jdhore about this problem from running: env FC_DEBUG=1 /opt/firefox/firefox --no-remote http://www.revision3.com > log

Comment 30

[JD]

(In reply to comment #28)
> (In reply to comment #25)
> > Also, here are screenshots illustrating the problem: First, in minefield where
> > i'm having the issue:
> > http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/3949/screenshotrevision3minemc3.png
> 
> Thanks for all the info.  Bug 390787 is making the situation worse, and hard to
> narrow down.  If you cover part of the document window with another window some
> of it should display.  Changing font preferences may also provide a partial
> workaround.
> 
> Perhaps I'll work on sorting out 390787 and then this might be easier to narrow
> down.
> 

Thanks for the information, 390787 seems to be the exact bug i'm having...Do we have any ideas of what's going on or when it's going to be fixed?

Comment 31

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

This build has the fix for bug 390787:

https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/[e-mail]2

I'd expect widgets to display with this, but some fonts and/or characters may
not?

Comment 32

[JD]

(In reply to comment #31)
> This build has the fix for bug 390787:
> 
> https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/[e-mail]2
> 
> I'd expect widgets to display with this, but some fonts and/or characters may
> not?
> 

That build has a lot of problems. The "main" folder isn't chmodded correctly (has to be chmodded as root for ANYONE to be able to open it) and Firefox doesn't start, this is the commandline output i got: 

jd@thor:/opt/firefox$ ./firefox
Cannot find mozilla runtime directory. Exiting.

I've been extracting the other hourlies to that same directory and doing much of the same stuff and they've been starting fine. 

Comment 33

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

(In reply to comment #32)
> The "main" folder isn't chmodded correctly
> (has to be chmodded as root for ANYONE to be able to open it) and Firefox
> doesn't start, this is the commandline output i got: 
> 
> jd@thor:/opt/firefox$ ./firefox
> Cannot find mozilla runtime directory. Exiting.

Yes, unfortunately the permissions are not quite right, and so, if you untar as root and then try to run as another user, it doesn't work.

However you can untar as jd and then run as jd. e.g.:

mkdir [e-mail]-firefox-try-linux
cd [e-mail]-firefox-try-linux
tar xjf ../[e-mail]2
firefox/firefox --no-remote

Comment 34

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

Attachment: testcase for jdhore

JD, are you able to tell me what this looks like with the tryserver build, please?

There are 6 font family names in boxes, but as I understand it you are not seeing Times and Helvetica?

For the empty boxes are you able to select as if there is text there?

Comment 35

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

Oh, and can you try resizing to see if that makes anything visible or invisible?  (ctrl-+ and ctrl--)

Comment 36

[JD]

All of the fonts are visible in the test case...let me make 2 screenshots of what the page i was screenshotting before looks like and what the one page that works looks like:

The site i was screenshotting before (Revision3.com) with the tryserver build:
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/7929/screenshotrevision3minevp2.png
What worked on yahoo.com with tryserver build:
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4450/screenshotyahoominefielmw8.png

This was odd...Whenever i did the Alt+PrtScr key combo, the content on this site that displayed changed:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minefield/
But it never displayed anything above the: "Warning: This is NOT A FINAL OR PRE-RELEASE VERSION. This program is....." paragraph.

Comment 37

[JD]

EDIT (sorry): I resized the fonts in the test case to the maximum and the minimum and all the text sizes worked.

Comment 38

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

OK, sorry, it is not this bug, then.
It looks like 390787 but showed up at a different time (when this bug was fixed).

Let's move discussion back to bug 390787, until I can find a reason why it is different to that bug.