681586 - Greek accented capital vowels show up as non-accented in wordpress.com editor

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: DOM: Editor, defect)

Description

[earlpiggot]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:9.0a1) Gecko/20110823 Firefox/9.0a1
Build ID: 20110823030804

Steps to reproduce:

1/ Go to your wordpress.com free blog (create one if you don't have)

2/ Start creating a new one or edit one of your posts

3/ Use the wordpress.com editor in HTML mode

4/ Type any of the 9 Greek accented capital vowels (i.e., with diacriticals): Ά, Έ, Ή, Ί, Ϊ, Ό, Ύ, Ϋ, or Ώ


Actual results:

Instead of the intended character --Greek accented capital vowel-- the respective non-accented vowel shows up, i.e. Α, Ε, Η, Ι, Ι, Ο, Υ, Υ, or Ω.




Expected results:

The Greek accented capital vowel, as entered, should be displayed.

But this is just in the HTML editor text box. The actual post, when saved, or previewed, or even when the editor is switched to Visual mode, will contain the proper character as intended.

So it looks like a matter of character substitution on the screen while using the HTML editor, in conjunction with the scripts used in this editor.

The bug has not occurred in any other text boxes in web pages I've tried. I can only confirm the bug in Windows XP. I've no idea about other Windows versions, or OSs. I am using the latest Nightly build.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Does it have to do with the font that particular edit box is using?

Comment 2

[earlpiggot]

(In reply to Boris Zbarsky (:bz) from comment #1)
> Does it have to do with the font that particular edit box is using?

Perhaps, but it's very weird, if so. I can't imagine a Unicode font missing characters; this is 2011... And as I said it's only what appears in the editor box; the actual characters are indeed passed.

Comment 3

[Alfredos-Panagiotis Damkalis [:fredy]]

It works fine for me with Gecko/20110829 Firefox/9.0a1 at both linux and windows XP.
Have you changed any font option at firefox? Have you reproduced this at safe mode or with a new clear profile? Do you use any special theme or any special option at wordpress, I asking because maybe it is critical for reproducing the bug.

Comment 4

[earlpiggot]

> Have you changed any font option at firefox? 

No

> Have you reproduced this at safe mode or with a new clear profile? 

yes and yes

> Do you use any special theme or any special option at wordpress?

no and no. I've tried other themes with identical results.

Comment 5

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to earlpiggot from comment #2)
> (In reply to Boris Zbarsky (:bz) from comment #1)
> > Does it have to do with the font that particular edit box is using?
> 
> Perhaps, but it's very weird, if so.

Please confirm what font is being used - I suspect this will turn out to be a font-specific issue.

> I can't imagine a Unicode font missing
> characters; 

I can. There are plenty of fonts around with less-than-complete support for various scripts and languages. It's possible that you have a font that "omits" the accents on these Greek capitals, perhaps on the assumption that uppercase Greek may be written without diacritics.

>this is 2011... 

(Although you're using Windows XP, which is rather older.)

>And as I said it's only what appears in the
> editor box; the actual characters are indeed passed.

This suggests to me that it is related to the particular font that's being used in that situation - either as a result of wordpress styles, or default font preferences, or fallback behavior if the font requested via the page styles doesn't actually support the Greek characters.

Comment 6

[earlpiggot]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew from comment #5)

Here is a screen shot from the editor with a Lorem Ipsum, made to include Greek capital vowels with diacriticals, which I have highlighted:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/afdff2147283911

As you can see, diacriticals on capital vowels show up fine in the title and the url text boxes, but are absent inside the editor window. What font it is? I can't be sure; it looks like Corbel which is nothing of an old font...

My firefox font settings are the default ones.

Comment 7

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

It's hard to be completely sure from a screenshot, but the editor font there looks like Consolas to me. (I don't believe this shipped with XP, but if you have MS Office installed it probably came with that.)

This had me puzzled for a while, as Consolas definitely includes the accented glyphs. However, it turns out that this font has an OpenType 'calt' (contextual alternates) feature that replaces the accented capitals with their unaccented counterparts. It looks like this was an attempt to be "clever" and adapt the orthography in all-capitals words, by detecting diphthongs with a tonos on the first vowel, and replacing this with a dieresis on the second vowel instead. To demonstrate, try (copy/paste to the URL bar):

  data:text/html;charset=utf-8,<div style="font-family:Consolas">ΆΙ ΌΥ

Although the text here has <Alpha-tonos, Iota, Omicron-tonos, Upsilon>, it renders in Consolas as <Alpha, Iota-dieresis, Omicron, Upsilon-dieresis>.

The same behavior can be observed in Notepad on Windows 7 (I'm not sure if Notepad on XP will support the OpenType features), demonstrating that it is not a Firefox bug but a font "feature".

The same test with Courier New, for example, displays the text as expected; this "feature" seems to be unique to Consolas.

A workaround would be to change the default Monospaced font in the Firefox options.

Comment 8

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew from comment #7)
> A workaround would be to change the default Monospaced font in the Firefox
> options.

Hmm, if the use of Consolas isn't coming from Firefox font prefs but from explicit styles on the wordpress site, this might not be so easy. But maybe wordpress has options to let you choose the fonts it uses? I don't know - never used it.....

Comment 9

[earlpiggot]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew from comment #8)

Double spot on! Courier New is my setting, yet the wordpress editor forces Consolas...

I suppose the way to go is to let wordpress.com support know. 

Or could a client side script override this font setting?

Comment 10

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to earlpiggot from comment #9)
> (In reply to Jonathan Kew from comment #8)
> 
> Double spot on! Courier New is my setting, yet the wordpress editor forces
> Consolas...
> 
> I suppose the way to go is to let wordpress.com support know. 

And also complain to Microsoft about this idiosyncratic and unexpected/undesired behavior of the Consolas font.

> Or could a client side script override this font setting?

Yes, that's possible. Perhaps the simplest thing would be to switch off the 'calt' (contextual alternates) feature globally; in principle, this could degrade rendering of other fonts that use it (most likely ornate cursive script fonts), but in practice you might (very likely) not have any fonts that need it. You could do this by putting

* { -moz-font-feature-settings: "calt=0"; }

into a "userContent.css" file in the "chrome" subdirectory of your Firefox profile. (And the easiest way to locate your profile directory is to go to about:support.)

More narrowly-targeted CSS could be used to try and address just the wordpress editor, but in practice you probably won't see any ill effects from this global approach.

Comment 11

[earlpiggot]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew from comment #10)
> * { -moz-font-feature-settings: "calt=0"; }

unfortunately, this doesn't work...

Comment 12

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to earlpiggot from comment #11)
> (In reply to Jonathan Kew from comment #10)
> > * { -moz-font-feature-settings: "calt=0"; }
> 
> unfortunately, this doesn't work...

Oh? That's disappointing. (Did you restart the browser?) It worked in a simple experiment here, but I wasn't dealing with the wordpress environment...

Comment 13

[earlpiggot]

(In reply to Jonathan Kew from comment #12)
> Oh? That's disappointing. (Did you restart the browser?) It worked in a
> simple experiment here, but I wasn't dealing with the wordpress
> environment...

Of course I restarted it. Probably the declarative's scope is limited outside the editor window. Did you test it in a text window? You can always create a free wordpress.com account, also...

Comment 14

[(no longer active)]

Should we move this bug to Evangelism, or to Layout: Text?

Comment 15

[Alfredos-Panagiotis Damkalis [:fredy]]

Is there any process on this bug?

thanks