395886 - default sans-serif font should have an italic variant

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 364713

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

Description

[hhaamu]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070809 Camino/1.5.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070809 Camino/1.5.1

Camino currently defaults to Helvetica for sans-serif. The font does not contain an italic variant, causing the variant to be synthesised by slanting. This is often uglier than using a proper font (see URL).

I suggest defaulting to the Helvetica Neue font, for the following reasons:
- it's very close to the original Helvetica font
- it contains an oblique ("italic") variant
- it contains several weight variants that could be used for CSS font-weight
- it is available at least since OS X 10.3: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25710

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

1. Sure it does, Helvetica Oblique.
2. For Roman langGroups, we use the same fonts as Safari, which is important for compatibility.
3. Check font rendering on the trunk; it's much improved.

Comment 2

[philippe (part-time)]

(In reply to comment #1)

1. Apple only ships Helvetica as 'regular' and 'bold'.

3. Trunk does not do slanting/bolding and other synthesising at the moment (but that is bug 364713).

Comment 3

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Helvetica Oblique and Bold Oblique are available; check the Cocoa font panel in TextEdit (unless they've changed that in 10.4, too :p )

If we're not picking it up, that's another bug altogether.

Comment 4

[philippe (part-time)]

Oops, you're right. And Safari displays it correctly.
But Oblique and Oblique Bold are not listed in FontBook.

Firefox 2.0.0.7pre uses it correctly if my eyes are not lying.

Comment 5

[Shreevatsa R]

cc me. Either Helvetica Oblique or Helvetica Neue ought to be used; there is no point using a default font which doesn't have italics, and then faking it.

Comment 6

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Helvetica is used, and it does have an "italic" variant, Helvetica Oblique.  It works everywhere (except on the trunk on 10.4, for which there is bug 396002).

Comment 7

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

I'm just going to dupe this to bug 364713, since that's where bug 396002 got duped.

Comment 8

[Shreevatsa R]

Please reopen; this is not a duplicate.

That bug 364713 is about italics not being simulated for fonts that lack it.

This bug is about not requiring simulation at all by default, by picking a font that has real italics. Helvetica doesn't, or at least it doesn't seem to be visible/available, so the current plan is to fake italics? Why not use a default font with real italics instead? That is the topic of this bug.