Open Bug 578829 Opened 14 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Helvetica Neue font text on Firefox 4.0 beta 1 appear incorrectly

Categories

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

x86
Windows XP
defect

Tracking

()

Tracking Status
blocking2.0 --- -

People

(Reporter: jykng, Assigned: jfkthame)

References

Details

Attachments

(5 files)

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:2.0b1) Gecko/20100630 Firefox/4.0b1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:2.0b1) Gecko/20100630 Firefox/4.0b1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

So with 4.0 beta 1, any text that's in 'Helvetica Neue', 'Helvetica Neue Condensed' and some of it's variations appear all wrong, on Windows XP which has those fonts (from Adobe) installed.

The problem with 'Helvetica Neue' while readable, is that it doesn't exactly have clear-type applied, it looks really pixelated.  

The problem with 'Helvetica Neue Condensed' is that it displays very different symbols past a certain size.  And '?' in spaces for sizes roughly below 1.5em.

Reproducible: Always
Left is how it appears in 3.6.6, right is how it appears in 4.0 beta 1.
Did you manually enabled directwrite or some other hidden features that you forgot to include in comment#0 ?
Directwrite was disabled, and it appears the same with it enabled too.
Jason, what version/flavor of Helvetica Neue are you using?  Type1 versions or Opentype (.otf)?  If you could post a list of Helvetica Neue fonts you have installed in your fonts folder that would be really helpful.
Here's a list of them all, though I suspect it's only the last 4, the .otf ones that really matter.

("Name" - Filename)
"HelveticaNeue Black" - HLBL____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BlackExt" - HLZV____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BlackExtObl" - HLZVO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BlackItalic" - HLBLI___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Bold" - HLB_____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BoldCond" - HLBC___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BoldCondObl" - HLBCO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BoldExt" - HLBV____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BoldExtObl" - HLBVO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BoldItalic" - HLBI____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue BoldOutline" - HLBOU___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Condensed" - HLC_____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue CondensedObl" - HLCO____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Extended" - HLV_____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue ExtendedObl" - HLVO____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Heavy" - HLH______.PFM
"HelveticaNeue HeavyCond" - HLHC____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue HeavyCondObl" - HLHCO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue HeavyExt" - HLHV____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue HeavyExtObl" - HLHVO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue HeavyItalic" - HLHI____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Italic" - HLI_____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Light" - HLL_____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue LightCond" - HLLC____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue LightCondObl" - HLLCO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue LightExt" - HLLV____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue LightExtObl" - HLLVO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue LightItalic" - HLLI____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Medium" - HLM_____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue MediumCond" - HLMC____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue MediumCondObl" - HLMCO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue MediumExt" - HLMV____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue MediumExtObl" - HLMVO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue MediumItalic" - HLMI____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Roman" - HLR_____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue Thin" - HLT_____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue ThinCond" - HLTC____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue ThinCondObl" - HLTCO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue ThinExt" - HLTV____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue ThinExtObl" - HLTVO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue ThinItalic" - HTLI____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue UltraLigExt" - HLAV____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue UltraLigExtObl" - HLAVO___.PFM
"HelveticaNeue UltraLight" - HLUL____.PFM
"HelveticaNeue UltraLightItal" - HLULI___.PFM

"HelveticaNeue-BoldCond (OpenType)" - HelveticaNeue-BoldCond.otf
"HelveticaNeue-Condensed (OpenType)" - HelveticaNeue-Condensed.otf
"HelveticaNeue-LightCond (OpenType)" - HelveticaNeue-LightCond.otf
"HelveticaNeue-UltraLigCond (OpenType)" - HelveticaNeue-UltraLigCond.otf
Jason, could you test once with *only* the Type1 fonts installed and then again with *only* the .otf versions installed?  My guess is you'll be able to track down the cause that way.

The last four .otf fonts conflict with the Type1 versions that are also installed.  Not really sure what GDI does to resolve the imbalance, but I would guess you may be getting somewhat random results because you're essentially dependent on an undefined OS name ordering.
There certainly was a conflict which never existed before in 3.6, at least with 'Helvetica Neue Condensed'.  They mostly appear fine without either the Type1 or without the OTF.  However with only the OTF there leads the problem in that 'Helvetica Neue' ends up using 'Helvetica Neue Ultra Light Cond' instead which isn't exactly the right font.

In fact with both the Type1 and OTF fonts in FF 4.0 it was using the OTF version of 'Helvetica Neue Ultra Light Cond' for 'Helvetica Neue'.  

I think for the most part 4.0 seems to ignore the Type1 fonts in rendering in most cases.
I got a similar problem.

Didn't have any problems with FF3.6, but after I upgraded to FF4b1 the pages where it has font-face: "Helvetica Neue" displays Black weight of helvetica neue.

when it's specified as "Helvetica 55 Roman", the font displays correctly.
Although the helvetica I have is opentype, it doesn't seem to be directly related to the issue.

I have a korean truetype font installed name 나눔고딕 (NanumGothic), and the same problem happens: where it's specified as "NanumGothic", the font displays bold, and where it's written as 나눔고딕 it displays correctly. (when really they should all display normal weights) -_-;;

Bug was not fixed in beta 2.
A test file I created to demonstrate the issue.
Similar problem in Beta 9, which does not happen in 3.6.

Attached (once I can find out how) is my screen shot of www.subtraction.com, where the heading is in Neue Helvetica. The body type is a custom font which we use in-house, and which works.

I’ve found that nothing in PostScript displays properly—just boxes with hex code come up.
Subtraction.com as displayed in Firefox 4 Beta 9: note the header. It is set in Neue Helvetica but it displays as boxes in Beta 9 (and Betas 7 and 8).
No type is legible at www.creativereview.co.uk. Numerous sites appear the same way.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Component: General → Layout: Text
Ever confirmed: true
Product: Firefox → Core
QA Contact: general → layout.fonts-and-text
Jack, please file a separate bug for that?  That seems pretty different from what comment 0 is talking about.
blocking2.0: --- → ?
Boris, thank you. I got your message on my blog and have cced you in on the new bug report.
Jonathan, can you look into this? It's not clear to me whether this should block.
Assignee: nobody → jfkthame
Depends on: 628091
This seems to be related to the installation of old Type 1 fonts, possibly together with OpenType versions of the same fonts. We should start by getting bug 628091 fixed, as we have a clear situation where Type 1 fonts are not rendered correctly, and then see whether there are further problems here with particular configurations of fonts.
OK. I don't think we'll block, this seems likely to be a rare issue.
blocking2.0: ? → -
Severity: normal → S3
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