417498 - Firefox 3 beta 3 preferences, fonts, doesn't see all my fonts (eg, American Typewriter Condensed)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Roger Watt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b3) Gecko/2008020511 Firefox/3.0b3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b3) Gecko/2008020511 Firefox/3.0b3

With FireFox 2, fonts selection via Preferences sees all of the American Typewriter family (regular, condensed, light, etc). But with Firefox 3 beta, it sees only one (the "regular"). The Fontbook application shows that they all exist in the "computer" collection and are active (and yes, any duplicates have been "resolved").

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.select "Preferences" menu
2.scroll through "Default font" list
3.
Actual Results:  
shows "American Typewriter" only -- missing the Condensed, Light, Condensed Light, etc

Expected Results:  
I expected to see all of the American Typewriter family, not just the "regular"

Comment 1

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

This is as intended.  In FontBook you'll see only "American Typewriter", that's the family name.  "American Typewriter Condensed", "American Typewriter Light", etc. are *face* names.  With CSS, only the family name should be specified, the actual face chosen is determined by other font attributes (font-weight, font-style, etc.).  That's what allows things like font-weight: bolder to work.  As an example, try this out with the Firefox 3 B3 build:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=297512

The Firefox 2 code uses an older Quickdraw API to determine the list of font family names in the prefs dialog, that's why you see a slightly odd set of font family names, like "Futura" and "Futura Condensed" but not "Futura Medium".  There's already a bug (bug 390901) for the problem of mapping old pref settings to new ones but in general we want to move away from Quickdraw-style font family names, they lead to inconsistent rendering across platforms. 

Comment 2

[Roger Watt]

I understand what you are saying. The "problem", I guess, lies in the packaging of "American Typewriter" ... versus, for example, "Arial Narrow", which is packaged as a separate family. Sigh. I have almost 10 years of stuff done in American Typewriter Condensed.

Thanks for the explanation.

Comment 3

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

If this is just for your own use, for another bug we recently added a pref setting that may be a way for you to use American Typewriter Condensed.  A pref setting was added on the mac, "font.single-face-list" which allows you to specify individual font faces that should be treated as font families.

1. In the URL box, enter about:config
2. In the filter box, enter font.sing
3. You should see "font.single-face-list" appear.  Double click on the value (by default "Osaka-Mono".
4. Add the Postscript name of the font face you want to treat as an independent family, in this case AmericanTypewriter-Condensed.  (You can look these up in FontBook, click on a particular font and select Preview > Show Font Info.  The Postscript name will be listed).

This will only work within your browser, you won't be able to publish pages with the font family name "American Typewriter Condensed" unless you actually have a font with that family name.

This change will be available in the next beta release, Firefox 3 B4.

Hope this helps.