536220 - Type weights look incorrect vs. Firefox / Webkit / original font

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Neil Lee [:neilio]]

Attachment: Screenshot of Photoshop, Namoroka, and Safari side-by-side

I noticed while developing a web site that uses the open source font Tittillium[1] that the lightest weight of this font looks good in Safari and too heavy in Firefox.

[1]:http://www.campivisivi.net/titillium/

The font used in the headings here is TitilliumMaps26L004

Comparison screenshot between Photoshop, Namoroka (20092012) and Safari 4.0.4 attached.

Comment 1

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Photoshop is using greyscale AA there, but its weight looks the same as Safari.

Comment 2

[philippe (part-time)]

Neil, how do you specify the font in your stylesheet ?


I do see a difference between Safari and Gecko (all Gecko 1.9.0.x ~ Gecko 1.9.3a1pre): 
* Gecko doesn't seem to recognize the second most heavy one (TitilliumMaps26L 750 wt) - everything above 'font-weight 700' is displayed with the most heavy face
* there is a discrepancy for 'font-weight 500' - 'font-weight 600'.

Comment 3

[philippe (part-time)]

Attachment: screenshot or comment 2

Gecko (left) vs Safari (right), seen on 10.6.2. I have noticed a similar difference on 10.5.8

Comment 4

[Neil Lee [:neilio]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Neil, how do you specify the font in your stylesheet ?

This page is live: http://getfirebug.stage.mozilla.com/home.php

Stylesheet is here:

http://getfirebug.stage.mozilla.com/css/main.css

Comment 5

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

Attachment: screenshot of titillium testpage, trunk vs. safari 4

I put together a quick testpage here:

http://people.mozilla.org/~jdaggett/tests/titilliumtest.html

The attached screenshot shows the differences compared to Safari 4, our mapping for weight 400 is incorrect, 400 should map to 500 if it's available, then to lighter weight.  In this case it's mapping to 300 rather than 500.  Webkit is doing the correct mapping.

The Firebug page has a number of problems, partly related to the confusing way faces are named in the Titillium family, it doesn't distinguish the faces using style names.  The current page on the staging server is using the two lightest weights (100 and 300), this is generally a bad idea especially when rendering on WinXP.  I would suggest using the 500 and 800 weights instead.

Also, the stylesheet is grouping different weights into different families.  Better to use a single family and assign weights in a sensible way and avoid problems related to synthetic bolding.