641860 - televideo.rai.it - HTML pages using Courier fixed font are rendered with a proportional font due to bad CSS fallbacks in page code

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[Moreno]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

Hello

There is a rendering problem on HTML pages using Courier fixed font.

The problem appear on all my Firefox 4.0 RC1 installations on machines with Windows 7 O.S, on others O.S. like Linux and Windows XP this problem do not appear.

The italian teletex service offer an "text only" page at http://www.televideo.rai.it/televideo/pub/solotesto.jsp

With previous Firefox versions or with different O.S. the page is rendered normally as showed in this image http://i55.tinypic.com/2ah64b5.png .
Is used a Courier fixed width font and the page is perfectly readable.

With Firefox 4.0 Rc the page is showed in this manner http://users.gxware.org/mozillaitalia/?v=wwwtelevideoraiioro.png , is used a proportional font and the page is unreadable.

I made ​​many trial changing parameters in the advanced font page without success.

Many friend of mine (using windows 7) have the same problem with this site.


Bye Bye, Moreno

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Giuliano Masseroni [:jooliaan]]

I confirm this bug. 
I can reproduce it with my version of Windows 7 and Fx 4.0RC1.
No problem instead with WinXP and Fx 4.0RC1.

More, as Moreno said, others peoples were able to reproduce the bug and then posted about it in the Italian Support Forum (see this thread http://forum.mozillaitalia.org/index.php?topic=49043.0 -in Italian-).

Cheers,
Giuliano

Comment 2

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

This is a web-authoring problem; they should not rely on a specific font-family name being available, as not all browsers/devices necessarily have a font named "Courier". Under DirectWrite there is no support for bitmap-only .fon-format fonts, and so the "Courier" family is unavailable. The nearest equivalent would be "Courier New", but the CSS on this page does not include that option.

If the site specified "font-family:Courier,monospace", for example, the browser should fall back to its default monospaced font if the specific family requested is not available.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Jonathan, is there any reason to not move this to evangelism?

Comment 4

[Moreno]

Hi


Mmmm, is not so easy, even in Windows XP the name of Courier font is Courier New but the problem do not appear.


Bye Bye, Moreno

Comment 5

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Jonathan, is there any reason to not move this to evangelism?

Well, as it stands that probably makes the most sense.

However, I wonder if we should support a collection of substitutions for the bitmap-only fonts that are standard on Windows, and probably specified by lots of Windows-centric pages; the fact that enabling HW acceleration suddenly makes these fonts unavailable and therefore radically changes the rendering of pages is quite surprising for naive authors (and users). See also bug 631193, which is essentially the same issue with "MS Sans Serif".

Comment 6

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Mmmm, is not so easy, even in Windows XP the name of Courier font is Courier
> New but the problem do not appear.

XP normally has both Courier and Courier New - they're two separate font families. (Win7 also has both, but the DirectWrite font system - which is used along with Direct2D when accelerated rendering is enabled - only supports TrueType/OpenType fonts, and Courier is only provided in bitmap-only .fon format.)

Comment 7

[Moreno]

Hi

You are right.

I installed a Courier ttf font taken from here http://www.fontemple.com/free-download/2549-Courier.html and now more or less the rendering work, the only problem is which this font is orrible.

Is possible create font alias to associate Courier New to Courier??


Bye Bye, Moreno

Comment 8

[Moreno]

Hi

I can not wait for the Rai solves the problem, I solved it at the root.

1) I dowloaded from http://code.google.com/p/ireader/downloads/detail?name=cour.ttf an hight quality Courier New font
2) Under Mandriva with FontForge I renamed the font in Courier and recompiled it.
3) I installed the new font under Windows 7
4) End, now all work properly.

If someone need this font can download it from http://depositfiles.com/files/r4cc59wgh


Bye Bye, Moreno

Comment 9

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Hi
> 
> I can not wait for the Rai solves the problem, I solved it at the root.
> 
> 1) I dowloaded from
> http://code.google.com/p/ireader/downloads/detail?name=cour.ttf an hight
> quality Courier New font
> 2) Under Mandriva with FontForge I renamed the font in Courier and recompiled
> it.
> 3) I installed the new font under Windows 7
> 4) End, now all work properly.
> 
> If someone need this font can download it from
> http://depositfiles.com/files/r4cc59wgh

A brief look at the information in that font file makes it clear that it is a copy of the Courier New font as shipped with Windows (licensed from Monotype). Whoever posted it on code.google.com is almost certainly violating the license terms; e.g., it states (in part), "Unless you have entered into a specific license agreement granting you additional rights, your use of this software is limited to your workstation for your own publishing use. You may not copy or distribute this software."

Comment 10

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > Hi
> > 
> > I can not wait for the Rai solves the problem, I solved it at the root.
> > 
> > 1) I dowloaded from
> > http://code.google.com/p/ireader/downloads/detail?name=cour.ttf an hight
> > quality Courier New font
> > 2) Under Mandriva with FontForge I renamed the font in Courier and recompiled
> > it.
> > 3) I installed the new font under Windows 7
> > 4) End, now all work properly.
> > 
> > If someone need this font can download it from
> > http://depositfiles.com/files/r4cc59wgh
> 
> A brief look at the information in that font file makes it clear that it is a
> copy of the Courier New font as shipped with Windows (licensed from Monotype).
> Whoever posted it on code.google.com is almost certainly violating the license
> terms

No offense, but that's hardly relevant to getting this bug fixed.

Comment 11

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> No offense, but that's hardly relevant to getting this bug fixed.

True. But comment #8 describes (and implicitly recommends to others, I think) a "solution"; it seemed appropriate to point out that there is a significant issue that the commenter may have overlooked, and that others considering the same approach should take into account. 

I have already suggested (in comment #5 and elsewhere) a possible approach we might take to fixing this issue, although it is really an authoring problem (people should not assume that a specific font is always available to the browser, but should provide fallbacks in their CSS).

Comment 12

[Moreno]

Hi

Mmmmm, I had not thought about licensing issues.
No problem, now I know the game.

I downloaded here http://font.downloadatoz.com/download,27289,liberation-mono-font-for-windows.html Free Liberation Mono Font.

I converted it in Courier (is better than Courier New font)

Here http://depositfiles.com/files/pnsd3yb0w is available the alternative font open.


I have voted your proposal https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=642093 , I think is the better solution.


Bye Bye, Moreno

Comment 13

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

I might be showing my ignorance here, but couldn't you just duplicate the Courier New font installed on any Windows system and rename the duplicate to "Courier"? (That would work on a Mac, at least back in the Classic Mac OS days when I still cared about fonts; not sure if it still works on OS X but I'd be mildly surprised if it didn't.)

cl

Comment 14

[Moreno]

Hi

No is necessary change the name inside the font.
Is necessary decode the font before changing her internal name, after is necessary reencode it.


Bye Bye, Moreno

Comment 15

[j.j.]

Fixed in Firefox 5 with bug 642093

Comment 16

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

(In reply to comment #15)
> Fixed in Firefox 5 with bug 642093

Not really; that bug has no bearing on whether the site has coded appropriate fallbacks or not. Working around the problem in one browser isn't going to fix this for users of any other browser.

Comment 17

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Problem still exists, I sent an email to [e-mail].

Comment 18

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

This seems to be fixed.