560472 - prefer standard system fonts for fallback

Status: NEW

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

Description

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

When a character is not found in the current style fonts, and not found via language/script-based prefs, we iterate over the list of available fonts looking for one that can render it. During this search, we look for a "best match", but in practice many fonts will be equally "good", so we take the first of these that is found.

I think we should consider prioritizing a list of known "standard" system fonts on each platform, so that these will be given precedence over arbitrary user-installed fonts that may be present. This will help to maintain more consistent rendering of symbols, dingbats, etc., that are typically not found via the normal language font prefs, and will reduce the risk of choosing poor-quality 3rd-party fonts which can lead to problems such as described in bug 560206 and (probably) bug 537444.

Comment 2

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

The problems discussed in Bug 654065 (rightly marked as a duplicate of this) are now pestering me again, this time with the inferior and superior digits. In particular &#8309; (fivesuperior) is a squashed mess in the default <p> formatting on my machine, and some of the others digits are shown in a near-fantasy typeface.

Yes, maybe I have too many fonts. But also maybe Firefox could have some preferred fonts which are more sensible.

Comment 3

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

Attachment: HTML, superior and inferior digits, poor font choices

Comment 4

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

Attachment: PNG, superior and inferior digits, poor font choices