35845 - UNREADABLE Inappropriate font used for some elements.

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Layout, defect, P3)

Description

[Tomasz Jarzynka]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14 i686; en-US; m14) Gecko/20000413
BuildID:    2000041316

This happens quite often. Most of the times the ' sign is replaced by an icon,
probably taken from a clipart font of some kind. A good example of this is the
header (In <BLOCKQUOTE> tag) on the page I have specified. This bug (is this a
bug actually?) is very annoying and sometimes (notably in this case) causes
documents unreadable.

Notes:
1. Didn't know, where to assign the bug.
2. Don't know, if this is a duplicate. Probably...
3. I use Type1 and Bitmap fonts from directories, and TTF fonts via xfstt
fontserver.



Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
Not clear, it just happens sometimes :/

Comment 1

[troy]

Looks like a Linux specific problem

Comment 2

[Richard Zach]

tomee: 
Which sign is replaced by an icon? What does the icon look like?

I recently filed bug 35551 where Central European charset 8859-2 isn't
recognized, and all the Polish characters (stroke-L, etc.) get rendered as
boxes.  Is that what you're seeing?

Comment 3

[dark]

i loaded that page i saw the boxes zach see, but contrary to the reporters 
problem, the blockquote looked perfect. So this *can* be a tt fontdriver problem 
- i use xfsft/xfs while the reporter uses xfstt. Which version, by the way?

Comment 4

[Tomasz Jarzynka]

Nope, I am seeing icons, not boxes (this has never happened to me, ISO-Latin2
fonts are handled pretty right). The whole BLOCKQUOTE on the URL above is filled
with icons, same letter->same icon, respectively. I use xfstt 0.9.10. Maybe I
should consider changing the Fontserver?

Comment 5

[R.K.Aa.]

you could try an upgrade at least: You find the latest version at:
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts/
File you want is xfstt-1.1.tar.gz
(second file from bottom of the page)
Several problems with encodings have been fixed since your own version. Do
report back if an upgrade helps.

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

[e-mail] - what happens to this one? :-)

Gerv

Comment 7

[R.K.Aa.]

I'm not really the right one to ask. But I wrote [e-mail] privately about
this matter one two weeks ago and haven't heard from him.

Someone using xfstt and the correct fontset (charset=ISO-8859-2, LANG=PL) should
test it again. If still a problem I guess it might qualify for a release note
regarding xfstt 0.9.10 and kyrillic fonts. As commented earlyer however, that is
an old version.

I'm really not sure if the CSS and charset/lang on that page even is correct.
There are several META tags seemingly  calling language specific characters:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="pl">
<META NAME="language" CONTENT="pl.pl">
<META NAME="locale" CONTENT="PL_pl">
and further down 
<P LANG=PL>

The described problem - pics replacing some characters in the block-quote - is
NOT happening under xfs/xfsft: There the blockquote comes through fine, but the
*rest* of the text has some squares (not "pics) indicating lacking fontset. I
see even more "squares" there with NC4.7 but perhaps that's not so strange: I
can't recall ever installing ISO-8859-2 fonts.

Comment 8

[R.K.Aa.]

Just got a mail from Tomasz: He still use xfstt 0.9.10 and have the same
problems in recent builds.

Disabled xfsft here, and installed xfstt 1.1 to check how this latest version
looks. The common web TT fonts from MS should have characters for ISO-8859-2
included. (It struck me that now and then I do see kyrillic fonts on web. I
can't judge whether accents are 100% correct as i don't know kyrillic alphabets,
but it looks OK to an outsider.)

Results now were:
-NC4.7: No blocks. Xfstt 1.1 encodes the page better than the latest xfsft.
-Mozilla: Gibberish (!) in the block-quote - rest of the fonts look OK.

Since NC4.7 manages to render this OK with the same fontserver, the problem
seems to be Mozilla's.

Attaching screenshots.

Comment 9

[R.K.Aa.]

Attachment: NC4.7 screenshot (jpg, 61k)

Comment 10

[R.K.Aa.]

Attachment: Moz 2000-05-13-08-M16 screenshot (jpg, 65k)

Comment 11

[R.K.Aa.]

spam.. forgot to say the "gibberish" that displays as font for the block-quote
area when using xfstt1.1 are not at "icons" It's a real font.
Somehow a blockquote blocks interpretation of correct language in this case, and
reverts to a not so well chosen "emergency exit" instead - unreadable. Symbol?

Comment 12

[Richard Zach]

Ok, this is a font server issue. The block quotation is displayed with
"font-family: fantasy, sans-serif;" (set by the style sheet).  No idea what font
Mozilla wants for "fantasy" (this used to be settable in the font prefs, I
think, but isn't any longer).  On my setup, it displays correctly.  Mozilla is
probably looking for a 8859-2 font for fantasy and erroneously selects one that
is a wingding font or something.   Erik will want to look at this.  dark or
tomasz, you may want to attach the output of xlsfonts to this bug report.

Comment 13

[Erik van der Poel]

I discovered some rather serious problems in the UnixMoz font code recently, and
have rewritten some of that code. It will be checked in before Tuesday night.
Please test this page again after I have checked it in. Thanks.

Comment 14

[Erik van der Poel]

I believe this was fixed by my checkins before the M16 deadline (5/16). I would
like the reporter to verify this.

Comment 15

[R.K.Aa.]

well if "reporters little helper" is still creditworthy, it looks OK now.

Looks as always under xfsft, and the funny stuff using xfstt is gone. :)

Comment 16

[Erik van der Poel]

RKA, it's good to hear that it's OK for you now, but I'd be even happier if it
was OK for the reporter too. Tomasz?

Comment 17

[Erik van der Poel]

I just received the following from Tomasz. Marking VERIFIED.

Subject: MOZILLA bug number 35845: Solved?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:36:04 +0200
From: Tomasz Jarzynka <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]

Sorry for writing you privately, but I'm too lazy to go to the bugform
on the www.

The bug seems to be fixed now, even though I am still using an
old version of xfstt.

-- 
Tomasz Jarzynka; tomee@nospam!.cpi.pl
Centrum Projektów Internetowych, PL