84668 - Ugly Chinese font in dialogs and menu on simplified chinese windows

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Internationalization, defect)

Description

[Feng Zhou]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.1) Gecko/20010607
BuildID:    2001060703

The characters look ugly in the toolbar, menus and dialogs, probably because of
wrong font or font size on simplified chinese version of windows 2k.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. On simplified chinese Windows, add a bookmark with a Chinese title.
2. Pull down the Bookmark menu and u will see the bookmark title
3.

Comment 1

[Feng Zhou]

Attachment: some Chinese characters in the Bookmark menu

Comment 2

[Feng Zhou]

Attachment: some normal characters in IE

Comment 3

[Frank Tang]

It seems the size we pick is too small. 
German- where do we set the size for skin. It looks you pick a font size too 
small for CJK text. 
nhotta- please take a look at this. Is the size reasonable for Japanese these 
days? 

German- are you using size 10 and below?
I agree the text is not readable. 

Comment 4

[german]

Both modern and classic set the font using what is set as system font. Please 
talk to skin master Hewitt (cc'd), if you need anything special here.

Comment 5

[nhottanscp]

Japanese bookmark text looks fine on JA localized windows (I will attach a
screen shot). But not good on US windows, probably it's system font related as
german's comment.

Comment 6

[nhottanscp]

Attachment: Screen shot: bookmark with JA text, on JA windows.

Comment 7

[nhottanscp]

Feng, is your system US version or you are using Chinese localized system?

Comment 8

[Feng Zhou]

I'm using Chinese localized windows 2000 professional.

Comment 9

[nhottanscp]

ylong, do you have Chinese windows (I think the bug is about Traditional Chinese)?

Comment 10

[Yuying Long]

I only have Simp. Chinese2k, I'll check it on Traditional Chinese window in lab 
later.

Comment 11

[Yuying Long]

Actually, I just noticed the reporter was using Simp. Chinese2k.
I got very similar result - the Chinese characters(kanji) not very nice, don't 
show same as in Japanese Windows(N6.1Ja).

Comment 12

[Frank Tang]

>Both modern and classic set the font using what is set as system font.

do you use the system setting for the size also ? I think the problem is not
what font you use, but also what size you use. 
can you kindly point out where is it in the css for bookmark & menu ? Thanks. 

Comment 13

[wacheo]

This problem also occurs in the Linux for both traditional and simplified fonts
(mozilla 2001072008). Occurs in bookmark, message list, and the message body.

Comment 14

[Blake Ross]

Doesn't look like this is getting fixed before the freeze tomorrow night.
Pushing out a milestone.  Please correct if I'm mistaken.

Comment 15

[nhottanscp]

*** Bug 92211 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[german]

pushing out 1 milestone, not sure that I should own this, as I am not an expert
on chinese charsets. Somebody on this list wants to own this?

Comment 17

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

0.9.5 is out the door. bumping TM up by one.

Comment 18

[marlon bishop]

cc'ing Shuehan, since Joe has relinquished his command.

Comment 19

[marlon bishop]

reassigning, i don't believe this should have belonged to german (or the UE team)

Comment 20

[Roy Yokoyama]

Let's get tao's opinion to see if we can do something here to 
look better in Chinese.
->tao

Comment 21

[tao]

We need to use debugger to find out why this is happening:

  1. are we returning the correct font size to the rendering engine?
  2. if yes, is there prettier font available on the system but is not selected
     by the browser?

Knowing the answer might help us make the decision as whether to fix the browser
code or assign better font settings for UI (tweak "chrome://global/locale/intl.css"
or default prefs.)

assign to [e-mail] for (1)

Comment 22

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

The answer to (1) in comment 21 is "Yes". I think the problem is that on a
non-localized system the default system font doesn't contain glyphs for Chinese,
so we are using glyphs from some other font, resized to the size of the system font.

Back to tao.

Comment 23

[Jonadab the Unsightly One (Nathan Eady)]

Looks like this won't make it in for 0.9.6.

Comment 24

[tao]

Bounce back to i18n group. CC l10n eng

It seems to me the text layout engine needs a bit help to choose prettier fonts on
native system. In theory, a native system should have sufficient font installed
to render reasonable looking native scripts.

Are we using the default system font size? How does Gecko determine what size to 
use? In other words, what's the order of precendence regarding font size: 
"intl.css", system font size, etc?

Also, re-targetting to 0.9.7

Comment 25

[Roy Yokoyama]

>In theory, a native system should have sufficient font installed
>to render reasonable looking native scripts.
I agree with tao.

>How does Gecko determine what size to use? 
I believe Gecko uses the Pref settings 
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/modules/libpref/src/win/winpref.js

Having said, I thought this bug is about the chinese text being ugly in the menu
and dialogbox. Can somebody answer Franks comment (#12)?
>can you kindly point out where is it in the css for bookmark & menu ? 

Comment 26

[Roy Yokoyama]

I think bookmark css is 
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsblame.cgi?file=mozilla/themes/modern/communicator/bookmarks/bookmarks.css
However, I failed to find font facename setting and font size in the CSS
Hewitt: where do we specify the facename and size?

Comment 27

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

The default font for all menus, (including the size), is set in |SetFont|
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/content/base/src/nsRuleNode.cpp#1635,
which (on Windows) calls |SystemParametersInfo| at
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/gfx/src/windows/nsDeviceContextWin.cpp#358

css for menus is in
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/themes/modern/global/menu.css and 
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/themes/classic/global/win/menu.css

Comment 28

[Roy Yokoyama]

->smontagu

Comment 29

[Frank Tang]

The size of menu font can be control by Control Panel:Display:Apperance:Menu

Comment 30

[Frank Tang]

I use yokoyama's simp chinese w2k system to look at it. The problem is the 
following
1. the modern theme listen to the control panel setting (not a problem)
2. in the simp chinese w2k system, if the appearance is set to "window classic" 
the font for menu is set to "Tahoma" 8. Which do not have Chinese glyph
3. in IE, when it set to "Tahoma" 8, it use a font fallback algorithm whihc pick 
up a nice fallback
4. in Mozilla, when it set to "Tahoma" 8, we SHOULD use the locale font setting 
for font fallback, but we don't for some reason.

The real problem is the font fallback algorithm for lang group x-unicode

Comment 31

[Frank Tang]

this is not a style sheet issue. This is a font fallback algorithm issue on 
window. Reassign to shanjian.
As you can see, if user set the "Menu" font to "Song" then we will display 
correctly. This is because the "Song" have chinese glyph but tahoma do not. The 
problem is our fallback algorithm does not pick up Song while it should.

Comment 32

[Frank Tang]

shanjian- what is the order of font fallback when a specific font do not have 
the glyph ? 

Comment 33

[Shanjian Li]

First we try the font name if specified by user, and then generic font using font family 
name. If still could not find a font, all system fonts will be tried in rather random 
order, and first one contains the glyph will be returned. 

Comment 34

[Frank Tang]

>First we try the font name if specified by user, and then 
>generic font using font family name. 
So... if the font-family is "tahoma" and the lang group is "x-unicode", and the 
system locale is "zh-CN", we should try the following 
1. "tahoma"
2. the "serif" font of "zh-CN", 
3. all other "serif" font for different langauge group
4. all other fonts, 

right ? (the reason 2 is "serif" font of "zh-CN" instead of "serif" font of 
"x-unicode" is because erik add some code in the nsLanguageAtomService to map 
"x-unicode" lang group to the locale lang group. 

However, I didn't see 2 happened. Do we pass "zh-CN" down as langgroup ? or 
"x-unicode" ? Which font we used ? Why?

Comment 35

[Shanjian Li]

Give me a minute and I will give you the whole picture about what's happening. 
Can you tell me where is the control panel setting?

Comment 36

[Shanjian Li]

Ok, here is what's happening. 
To be simple, it is not because we choose the wrong font, but because "we?" choose the 
wrong size. On my simplified win2k system, control panel shows default setting is 
"tahoma" with size 8, that is interpreted as height of "-11" in creating font. When 
this font is failed to display those chinese characters, global font is tried and 
"MS song" is found. But size "-11" make the font looks ugly. 

Selecting size "9" in control panel menu setting, problem will be gone. 
Selecting "Song" but keep size "8", problem is still there. 

Some additional detail,
The lang group we are using is x-wester, not x-unicode. That is reasonable because the 
whole interface is English. If user using localized chinese UI, we should use 
"zh-cn" as lang group. (If not , that will be a bug.)

Comment 37

[Shanjian Li]

Solution? 

Strictly speaking, this is not a problem of browser. We should honor control panel's setting, 
and we should keep all font looks the same size. It is possible to put in a hack in creating 
font. That is to use a slightly larger size for CJK font. But I believe many people may hate 
the idea and we will create more problems that solved.

Comment 38

[Shanjian Li]

Attachment: screen shot: comparison of size 8 and 9 (IE)

Comment 39

[Shanjian Li]

I post a screen shot of IE with size 8 and size 9. As you might notice that 
they (MS) are using same size for Chinese characters, and different size for
English. For further smaller size (6, 7), chinese character becomes sizable 
again. 

Comment 40

[Frank Tang]

>Some additional detail,
>The lang group we are using is x-wester, not x-unicode. That is reasonable 
>because the 
>whole interface is English. If user using localized chinese UI, we should use 
>"zh-cn" as lang group. (If not , that will be a bug.)

Ok, I got it. We add the font setting for the UI locale (user locale) to the 
generic list. Should we also add the system locale to the generic list after ?

Look at nsFontMetricsWin.cpp FindGenericFont we first add the font and font-list 
of the langgroup to the list, and then we add the gUsersLocale's font and 
font-list to the list (if gUsersLocale is differ from langgroup) and then we 
call GenericFontEnumContext. Should we add the font and font-list of the 
system's locale before we call GenericFontEnumContext ?

If we do so, then we will try simplified Chinese font first before try other 
fonts. This will make the English UI build run better on Chinese system.

and also, we should try all font and font-list of other language group
before we try global font.

So... currently, the algorithm is
1. try the font user specify
2. try font and font list of the page's language group
3. try font and font list of the user's ui language group
4. try global font

and I suggest we add
3.1 try font and font list of the system's language group
3.2 try font and font list of the rest language groups

>On my simplified win2k system, control panel shows default setting is 
>"tahoma" with size 8, that is interpreted as height of "-11" in creating font. 
>When this font is failed to display those chinese characters, global font
> is tried and "MS song" is found. 
on roy's chinese system, that is not exactly what we see. It seem's it is not 
using "MS song" but some other type face. 

Comment 41

[Frank Tang]

move this bug to m0.9.8

Comment 42

[Shanjian Li]

frank, it is "Song". All the difference we saw are because of size. 
I manually change the size during my debug session and it works. 

As for your suggestion about traversing lang group in find generic font. 
That looks reasonable to me. How to make it work efficietly is my concern.
I believe it is doable.

Comment 43

[Frank Tang]

>frank, it is "Song". All the difference we saw are because of size. 
That is not what I saw. I agree that size is one major issue. but one another 
issue is we didn't pick a reasonable font face neither. I belive we need to 
address both issues.

Comment 44

[Frank Tang]

Attachment: trial patch to take system locale and other pref before try global.

here is a trial patch

Comment 45

[Frank Tang]

not sure the trial patch make thing better yet. Need to test on a system which 
reproduce the problem easily.

Comment 46

[Yuying Long]

-> nsbeta1, it really ugly with Simplified Chinese windows including
WinXP-SimpChinese interface.

Comment 47

[Yuying Long]

Actually, the above comment was on Multi-lingual WinXP with default language
setting to Simp. Chinese.
On real localized Simp. Chinese WinXP, the font will display fine.

Comment 48

[Frank Tang]

nsbeta1+ 
may be we should do this
in the system is Chinese and the font size it return is < 9, return 9

Comment 49

[Shanjian Li]

In IE, they only use size 9 font to display size 8 characters for Chinese, all
English strings remain 8. Similar things does not happen if size < 8. That's say
if request size is 6,7,etc, they do display those chinese characters as
requested. AND this happens for UI font only. In html body, all request size if
honored, size 8 chinese font is not allign to 9. 

I guess the problem should exist beyond localized chinese win2K. If we implement
a generic solution, (eg. align size 8 to 9 for chinese characters), we will
break something else. This is really a headache. 

Comment 50

[Frank Tang]

nsbeta1- 

Comment 51

[Shanjian Li]

push to 1.01

Comment 52

[Michele Carlson]

ftang - don't you think this should be a nsbeta1+? If we're going to make a
Chinese product, we want it to look okay. 

Comment 53

[Yuying Long]

FYI: (haven't check WinNT-CN and WinME-CN though)

Chinese font look good: 
WinXP-CN, Win98-CN

Font has the problem as showing in this bug: 
WinXP-Multi-Lingual UI when setting SimpChinese as default language, Win2000-CN
and other non-SimpChinese windows.

Comment 54

[Yuying Long]

renominate as nsbeta1 - we still see it on many windows system, especially on Win2k.

Comment 55

[nhottanscp]

Yuying, is this nominated again for Win2k? Is it okay for other Window platforms?

Comment 56

[Yuying Long]

It's for both - win2k including win2k-SC, WinXP-multiligua UI even you setting
locale as SC, any other non-SC systems.

Comment 57

[Frank Tang]

we should release note this. People can change their font size by changing
"Control Panel:Appearance". They can select a different font or increase the
font size. The quality of the font is not really in our control. This is really
a MS window's bug instead of an application bug. 
nsbeta1- and please release note it.

Comment 58

[Yuying Long]

Get together with Frank and Xianglan, Frank did some more research on seetins
between system and our prferences, we might have a solution for this.

Renominate as nsbeta1 again.

Comment 59

[Frank Tang]

so... we decide to do the following, in the simplified chinese system, if the
control panel return 9 or smaller value, return 9 instead.

to implement that. we need to add code to
mozilla/gfx/src/windows/nsDeviceContextWin.cpp GetSysFontInfo method and right
before CopyLogFontToNSFont (or in that function) check the height and when the
size is too small (make sure we cover both the positive case and negativie case)
round up to equal to 9 if it is running on the simplified chinese system
(GetACP() == 936 )

reassign to ftang as adt 2 

Comment 60

[John Paul]

I'm using win2k and the default language is traditional chinese. I did not use
chinese menu in mozilla because chinese font in the menu is very difficult to read.

Today I tried to change the font setting in mozilla. I changed all the fonts for
unicode to mingliu (a font for traditional chinese). After restart, the display
of chinese menu is much better. The font is the same as the screenshot from
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~b7506051/mozilla/screenshot.html

I'm not sure whether it only works in my computer. In my first trial, I needed
to delete Arial Unicode MS font to make things happen.

Comment 61

[Frank Tang]

Attachment: patch

shanjian, can you r=

Comment 62

[Frank Tang]

cc shanjian

Comment 63

[Shanjian Li]

We should only replace 8 with 9, and keep rest size (7, 6, etc) unchanged. 

Comment 64

[Frank Tang]

anything below 9 is too small and ugly.

Comment 65

[Shanjian Li]

I knew. But any size below 8 must be manually selected by user. If they do it,
they must have a reason and we should respect their choice. Size 8 is special
because it is a default, and this default size is not a good choice.

Comment 66

[Frank Tang]

shanjian, this value is control by the control pannel. And the user may not
select a specific font size to change it. If user select a differen APPEARANCE
THMEM, the font name and size may change. So what the user may do is to change
from "Window Traditional" to "Window XP" theme, and the size could be change. or
select from "Normal" to "Small" the size could be changed. 

remember, this code will only be hit when we access the info from the control
panel, this code does NOT impact the size from our preference window, nor any
direct reference in css or html.

Comment 67

[Shanjian Li]

Comment on attachment 85338 [details] [diff] [review]
patch 

r=shanjian per ftang's #66.

Comment 68

[Alec Flett]

Comment on attachment 85338 [details] [diff] [review]
patch 

is 936 stored anywhere special? i.e. is there a CP_936 or CP_CHINESE_something
#define somewhere that we could be re-using? 

if so, lets use that. otherwise, sr=alecf

Comment 69

[Frank Tang]

all the documentation refer to 936 directly. There are a SNA header file define
CP_936, but it will create dependency on a wrong header file. 

Comment 70

[Frank Tang]

check into trunk at 6/4 afternoon. Forget to mention that. mark it fixed now. 

Comment 71

[Yuying Long]

Seems the checked-in didn't affect the display in trunk build on both win2k-SC
and WinXP-SC.

Comment 72

[Frank Tang]

Attachment: right rix

the last patch is wrong. we need to back it out from the trunk and land thie
patch intead.

Comment 73

[Frank Tang]

shanjian: can you look at my latest patch and try on your chinese system?

Comment 74

[Shanjian Li]

Frank,
I tried your patch on my SC2k. You need to make some modification before it will
work. You need to adjust the size before converting to twips. After that, all
font in menu, dialog, etc use 9 point font instead of 8 point. When we running
mozilla english version on Chinese system, do we really want all those fonts in
9 points? I am kind of hesitant to such a change. 

Comment 75

[Frank Tang]

the fix in trunk is not good. should back it out.

Comment 76

[Frank Tang]

reassign to shanjian to work on. 

Comment 77

[Shanjian Li]

Attachment: new patch

Comment 78

[Shanjian Li]

Now change is only limited to size 8. 
frank, could you r=?

Comment 79

[Frank Tang]

Comment on attachment 87308 [details] [diff] [review]
new patch

are you sure you should check and change it before the NSIntPointsToTwips?
should aFont->size be limited to 9 or pointSize be limited to 9? I remember in
my computer I got pointSizet = 11 but NSIntPointsToTwips convert it to 8. Can
you confirm that? Will it change depend on the screen res?

Comment 80

[Shanjian Li]

I verified this on my box, pointSize should be limited to 9. I also tried a
different resolution, it works the same way.

Comment 81

[Frank Tang]

Comment on attachment 87308 [details] [diff] [review]
new patch

r=ftang

Comment 82

[Shanjian Li]

Alec, could you sr?

Comment 83

[Alec Flett]

Comment on attachment 87308 [details] [diff] [review]
new patch

sr=alecf

Comment 84

[Shanjian Li]

fix checked into trunk. 

Comment 85

[Yuying Long]

Verified fixed on 06-18 trunk build on both WinXP-SC and Win2k-SC with Chinese
personal toolbar names and bookmark names.

Comment 86

[Judson Valeski]

please checkin to the 1.0.1 branch. once there, remove the "mozilla1.0.1+"
keyword and add the "fixed1.0.1" keyword.

Comment 87

[Paul Wyskoczka]

Marking adt1.0.1+ on behalf of the adt for checkin to the 1.0 branch.  

Comment 88

[Shanjian Li]

fix checked into branch. 

Comment 89

[Yuying Long]

Verified fixed on 06-19 Netscape 1.0 branch build on both WinXP-SC and Win2k-SC
with Chinese personal toolbar names and bookmark names.