412832 - Regression in font appearance since Firefox 2. Hinting looks unacceptable bad.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Simon]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008011404 Minefield/3.0b3pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008011404 Minefield/3.0b3pre

The nighlty builds have a significantly degraded font rendering quality.
Fonts don't display in there requested color, e. g. black, but in a mixture of red, black and green for instance, which is quite likely a hinting problem.
FreeType's autohinter is used. 

(When using bytecode-hinting, the fonts look like in Firefox 2: http://ochsenreither.de/~soc/rendering_h-strong.png )

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Firefox
2. Browse to any website
Actual Results:  
Fonts will look ugly.
http://ochsenreither.de/~soc/rendering.png

Expected Results:  
Fonts shouldn't look ugly, at least the level of font quality seen in Firefox 2 should be reached.
http://ochsenreither.de/~soc/rendering_ok.png

In my opinion the severity is 'major', because readable text is one of the most important features a browser should provide.

(Additionally, I don't want to stay at Firefox 2, because of that unbearable bug ... so hopefully it gets fixed faster that way :-P)

Comment 1

[martin]

Attachment: here is a close up that shows the difference between rendering.png and rendering_ok.png

Here is a close up that shows the difference between rendering.png and rendering_ok.png (I agree it looks worse in ff3 but when these images were zoomed out I didn't see the difference directly).

Comment 2

[martin]

Attachment: same page rendered in ff2 and ff3-nightly-minefield-2008011604

Exact version of ff3 nightly build was:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008011604 Minefield/3.0b3pre

Looks almost identical on my machine, maybe it uses some other kind of hinting or something?

Comment 3

[Ryan Hickman]

Fonts appear fine to me on nightly:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008011704 Minefield/3.0b3pre

Kubuntu 7.10

Comment 4

[Sylvain Pasche]

Martin, what distribution are you using?

This is certainly bug 404637

Some distribution patch Cairo so that you get less color fringes when not using the autohinter.

Comment 5

[Sylvain Pasche]

(In reply to comment #4)
> ... when not using the autohinter.

err, rather when using the autohinter (or not using the bytecode interpreter)

Comment 6

[Thomas Jones]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Martin, what distribution are you using?
> 
> This is certainly bug 404637
> 
> Some distribution patch Cairo so that you get less color fringes when not using
> the autohinter.

Ubuntu

Comment 7

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.13 or later in safe mode or a fresh profile? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles

You may also wish to try with the latest Firefox 4 beta, http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html.

Comment 8

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.