654639 - Installing Google fonts to enable printing requires clearing 170+ modal dialogs on browser restart.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 567552

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

Description

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:5.0a2) Gecko/20110503 Firefox/5.0a2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:5.0a2) Gecko/20110503 Firefox/5.0a2

Pages that use @FontFace to render webfonts such as those in the Google Web Font collection do not print properly (see bug #468568).  A work-around exists. If you install the fonts in the OS, then Firefox will properly render the printed page.

There are published links to zip files that contain the entire Google font collection (e.g. the URL above), which make this option appear to be attractive.

However, if you install those fonts, restarting Firefox pops a dialog box asking for permission to use each of the installed fonts (regardless of whether or not that font is used on a page in a currently open tab).  Installing the fonts in the zip file thus requires clearing 173 modal dialog boxes to use the browser.

Firefox does not ask for permission to use other TTF fonts installed in the system, only the web fonts.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Download the font collection from the URL listed above, unzip and install the fonts.
2. Restart the Browser.


Actual Results:  
You are asked for permission to use a font 173 times before you can use the browser.

Expected Results:  
The browser opens.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Richard, could you attach a screenshot of the dialog you see?  I'm not aware of any such prompt in Firefox itself....

Comment 2

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

Boris, it looked like a modal dialog box out of the O/S. But, I've never seen Safari or Opera ask for permission to use a font. (Or any other app for that matter).  The dialog specifically says "Aurora is asking for permission to use..."

This is the third time I've hit the problem, and it's painful enough I'm sure I'm not imagining it, I've marked this bug as invalid because I'm having trouble reproducing it even if I clean all of the Google fonts out of the system, reboot, empty the trash, reboot and then try the reinstall.

I'll reopen it when I can write up a solid reproducible example.    I suspect something wonky in the profiles because Aurora just threw away all my tabs and app tabs when I restarted, and there were no open tabs in FF4, FF3.6.17, or Nightly when I just looked either.  (Even though those all use separate profiles).   Too many strange things going on!   I'll keep digging and report back when I have something a that makes more sense.

Comment 3

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

Sounds like a dupe of bug 567552.  This is an regression bug in OSX 10.6, we're affected because we use older font APIs that work on both 10.5/10.6.  Safari has different binaries for 10.5/10.6.

Richard, can you see if the steps noted in bug 567552, comment 3 resolve the issue?  You'll need to reboot.

Comment 4

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

John,

AHA!! Yes I can confirm that the problem described in 567552 is what's happening. In the testing mentioned in comment 2, I was Installing the fonts and then carefully activating them.  Which, of course, prevented me from reproducing the problem.

Thanks!

Comment 5

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> AHA!! Yes I can confirm that the problem described in 567552 is what's
> happening. In the testing mentioned in comment 2, I was Installing the fonts
> and then carefully activating them.  Which, of course, prevented me from
> reproducing the problem.

If you have a way to consistently reproduce bug 567552, that would be fantastic!  If so, please log it on that bug.

Comment 7

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> John,
> 
> AHA!! Yes I can confirm that the problem described in 567552 is what's
> happening. In the testing mentioned in comment 2, I was Installing the fonts
> and then carefully activating them.  Which, of course, prevented me from
> reproducing the problem.
> 
> Thanks!

Richard, there's a tryserver build set up with what I think might be a fix for the problem:

  http://bit.ly/mEUkxW

Please let me know if this fixes the problem for you.

Comment 8

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

John,

I saw the tryserver build in bug 567552 and downloaded it in anticipation of seeing if it worked for me.   But in about three hours of trying, I've been completely unable to reproduce the problem.   I've seen it three times in the last month or two, always running FF4 or Aurora, but now I can't figure out how to force it.  I've tried removing and adding fonts with automatic activation both on and off, and with a clean Aurora profile  ...and with lots of trash emptying and reboots thrown in just in case. 

I'm clueless!

Comment 9

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

John,

I saw the tryserver build in bug 567552 and downloaded it in anticipation of seeing if it worked for me.   But in about three hours of trying, I've been completely unable to reproduce the problem.   I've seen it three times in the last month or two, always running FF4 or Aurora, but now I can't figure out how to force it.  I've tried removing and adding fonts with automatic activation both on and off, and with a clean Aurora profile  ...and with lots of trash emptying and reboots thrown in just in case. 

I'm clueless!

Comment 10

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

Sorry about the double post.... comes from opening too many browsers and session restores.