470407 - Tamil characters like " கொ(ko),கோ(kO) " are messed up.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

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

Description

[trki]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.20) Gecko/20081217 Firefox/2.0.0.20
Build Identifier: http://jp-nii02.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0.5/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%203.0.5.exe

Dec 19, 08

Firefox 3.0.5, displays incorrectly tamil unicode characters. This problem was present in earlier 1.0 releases, while recent versions of 2 were alright. This problem again shows up in this 3 release. This essentially makes the upgrade from rel 2 to rel 3 useless for me.

Problem seems to be improperly building  tamil vowel signs like O, OO with characters like 'KA', i.e. joining non-reserved charaters in the range Hex 0BCA - OBB9 with characters in teh range Hex 0BCA-0BCC. In this rendering one symbol appears before the character 'KA' and another symbol after 'KA'.

If you open up the URL "http://www.dinamalar.com/headlines.asp?dt=12/18/2008" with the latest Firefox 2 and 3, the problem will become apparent.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open up the page shown in the url under Firefox 2.0.0.20
2.Open up the same page in firefox 3.0.5
3.The differences will be obvious

Comment 1

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Attachment: Screenshot from www.dinamalar.com

I wasn't able to reproduce this bug, but I don't read Tamil, so I may be missing something. Can you provide a reduced testcase and/or a screenshot that shows exactly where you are seeing incorrect rendering?

Comment 2

[trki]

Attachment: jpg file for ff v2.0.0.20

this is a screen capture of the correct display under ver 2

Comment 3

[trki]

Attachment: v 3.0.05 jpg of the url messed up tamil display

This jpg is the screen capture of the same url under ff v3.0.5 showing messed up tamil display

Comment 4

[trki]

Attachment: unicode txt file to easily load into the two version of the releases

This txt file has the 12 vowels-consonant combinations for two consonants 'KA' and 'TA'.  This file can be opened under the two versions. The last 3rd line will show the last the letters incorrectly compared the file opened in notepad

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #2)
> this is a screen capture of the correct display under ver 2
(In reply to comment #3)
> This jpg is the screen capture of the same url under ff v3.0.5 showing messed up tamil display

Opposite, isn't it? (Fx 3 displays as expected. Fx 2 messes up, or displays only in primitive/old/restricted representation).
See Bug 471947(and documents pointed in it), and read Bug 471947 Comment #7.

Comment 6

[trki]

9 Jan 09
In reply to comment 5 - No change in my experience.

Now I know why firefox 1 & 2 and Opera did not render the unicode tamil properly earlier. Some time ago I did enable indic scripts in Win XP for some other program. That must have caused to render the characters correctly. I was wrong in my bug report by referring to this problem in ff 1.

My ssytem has Win XP SP3 with the latest USP10.dll (1.420.2600.5512 dt 4/14/08). Originally I had both firefox 2.0.20 and 3.0.5 installed.  I removed indic support in XP. Both 2.0.20 were messed up like 3.0.5.

Then, I removed 2.0.20 and 3.0.5. Reinstalled indic support and FF3.0.5 The problem DID NOT go away.  I reinstalled 2.0.20.  I used the same site as in bug 47197 (http://unicode.org/standard/translations/tamil.html)

My experience is not as in comment #5 but as I have reported in this.

Comment 7

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

> I removed indic support in XP. Both 2.0.20 were messed up like 3.0.5.

It's expected result.

> Then, I removed 2.0.20 and 3.0.5. Reinstalled indic support and FF3.0.5 The problem DID NOT go away.

Did you correctly re-install and ENABLE the "indic support" after uninstall of "indic support"?  Following is a page found by Google search for '"indic support" "MS Windows"'.
> http://www.vrundacomputing.com/webquiz/indic-support/index.jsp
MS Win XP SP1? SP2? SP3?

Comment 8

[trki]

13 Jan 09

In comment 6, the last line in the second paragraph  'Both 2.0.20 were messed ", should read as "Both 2.0.0.20 and Opera 9.63 were messed ".

> Did you correctly re-install and ENABLE the "indic support" after uninstall of
"indic support"? 

Re-installation of indic script support restored the proper rendering of unicode Tamil and other Indian scripts in all programs which required this support.  These programs earlier stopped displaying properly after this support was removed. This obviously means that the reinstllation of indic script is correct!

XP SP3 was installed around 21st Dec 08, but almost all of most of the updates for SP2 were already installed.  All porgrams using unicode that were displaying correctly before, worked correctly after SP3 update also.

If Firefox sets up something, in Registry or elsewhere, that are diffrerent between v2 and 3 but was retained as I installed v3 in a separate directory from v2, can they be causing the improper rendition of Unicode Tamil in v3?

Comment 9

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #8)

Now you can probably see correct glyphs of many languages. Congratulations.

> If Firefox sets up something, in Registry or elsewhere, that are diffrerent
> between v2 and 3 but was retained as I installed v3 in a separate directory
> from v2, can they be causing the improper rendition of Unicode Tamil in v3?

Have you read Bug 471947 Comment #7 which I already mentioned?
I guess;
(Before uninstall/re-install of indic support)
  Required modules for "indic support" is already installed,
  but is not enabled in Control Panel. (PC is shipped in this status)
(After uninstall/re-install of indic support)
  Required modules for "indic support" is installed again,
  and is enabled in Control Panel, by full installation process.

By the way, I knew now that "It's Tamil for me" is far appropriate phrase for me than "It's Greek for me", because I can never read/understand both but I can distinguish Greek letters. :-)

Comment 10

[trki]

Jan 17,09

My suspicion was right.  The old profile must have something that prevented the correct rendering of  Unicode Tamil characters.  I saved most everything in the
C:\Documents and Settings\ user....\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox except Profiles directory.  I played with switching between old modified profile ,the old default profile  and the new profile that were in it.  Sure enough when the old unmodified profile or the new profile was used, the problem went away.  But alas! I lost everything in the Profile directory, including my old modified profile with all my preferences, sessions , etc., when I thought I was deleting only the default profile.  I did not have a back up of these profiles.  So, I lost "the baby with the bathtub".  Well, anyway I can now use 2.0.0.20 or 3.0.5.

I wish I could have located  the cause of the problem or at least, someone in mozilla could have investigated.  I wonder if anyone can tell me what in the profile or configuration causes this behavior.  Who can some throw light on this?

Re: Tamil vs Greek -  Well, all you have to do is to look at the images and locate the differences.  Many news dailies publish something like "find 6 differences between the two panels" where two almost identical pictures with 6 slight changes are printed.  This applies equally to ideogramic languages like Hieroglyphs, Japanese,  Chinese, Korean etc. as well as linguists to ancient glyphs  try to decipher!

I am sure this is also the problem in bug 471947

Comment 11

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Comment 10 suggests this was some setting in a particular profile folder.