953883 - Problems with "Sacco-Vanzetti Instantbird" font

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Instantbird Servers Graveyard :: Other, defect)

Description

[Benedikt Pfeifer]

*** Original post on bio 442 at 2010-07-13 21:40:00 UTC ***

Especially on bold text there are problems with this font.
On the attached screenshot I highlighted and numbered some parts for easier reference.

Sometimes it seems to be the spacing of letters and sometimes the kerning that is not right. Some letters seem to have a wrong height.
It appears the height and spacing is a problem depending on the fontsize, as zooming in seems to make the problem go away.
The kerning problem persists (e.g. #1, 'W' and 'e' are pretty far away from each other).

Comment 1

[Instantbot]

*** Original post on bio 442 by Quentin Castier <idechix AT instantbird.org> at 2010-07-14 08:59:52 UTC ***

(In reply to comment #0)
> Especially on bold text there are problems with this font.
> On the attached screenshot I highlighted and numbered some parts for easier
> reference.
> 
> Sometimes it seems to be the spacing of letters and sometimes the kerning that
> is not right. Some letters seem to have a wrong height.
> It appears the height and spacing is a problem depending on the fontsize, as
> zooming in seems to make the problem go away.
> The kerning problem persists (e.g. #1, 'W' and 'e' are pretty far away from
> each other).

Please add your screenshot.

Comment 2

[Benedikt Pfeifer]

*** Original post on bio 442 at 2010-07-15 10:55:14 UTC ***

Mea culpa, I ran into bug 953887 (bio 446) here. I'll upload it as soon as I have access to the file (and remember to do it).

Comment 3

[Benedikt Pfeifer]

Attachment: Screenshot

*** Original post on bio 442 as attmnt 315 at 2010-07-15 21:00:00 UTC was without comment, so any subsequent comment numbers will be shifted ***

Comment 4

[Benedikt Pfeifer]

*** Original post on bio 442 at 2011-04-16 10:05:31 UTC ***

The problem exists also on Windows 7 and Firefox 4 / Nightlies for Firefox 6.
The problem doesn't exist on higher zoom-levels/larger font-sizes.

A workaround is to disable webfonts by setting in about:config:

  gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled : false

--
There's been an article about problems with font rendering on different OS' recentely on PMO, it doesn't give much details but only a rough idea what's going wrong in general. Maybe someone likes to read:

http://www.owlfolio.org/htmletc/legibility-of-embedded-web-fonts/

Comment 5

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

+1. While reported for Win XP, this also occurs on (no longer supported) Win 2000 and Win 7 with default (small) font size, changing severity when zooming allright. I heard it does not on Mac OS.

Why not just use a more regular font that’s not causing this? At least something needs to be done, as the current font may scare users away from the web site. This bug was filed mid 2010 and I don’t expect a possible general Windows or font specific issue to get resolved here.

Comment 6

[aleth [:aleth]]

How about Open Sans? It's also a sans serif, and fwiw it's the mozilla default typeface, https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/communications/typefaces/.

Comment 7

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

Please do, at least something should happen and your option sounds very well.

Comment 8

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

Regarding Open Sans: bug 937413 just drew my attention, which may be useful in case anything is about to change.

Comment 9

[aleth [:aleth]]

Attachment: Open Sans.png

As a quick experiment, here's Open Sans.

Comment 10

[aleth [:aleth]]

Attachment: Open Sans dark grey.png

Open Sans plus a darkgrey background.

Comment 11

[aleth [:aleth]]

Attachment: Open Sans 500 blog.png

Open Sans in the blog, different colour background for fun.

These are all simple changes, feedback welcome.

Comment 12

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

Thanks for trying this. I think all look well, but maybe keeping the default type would be the wisest thing to do? Personally I prefer darker fonts, but that’s because of personal visibility issues and should not be a requirement.

Comment 13

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

aleth, would you say it's safe to apply any of these fonts, or is there any reason not to?

Comment 14

[aleth [:aleth]]

(In reply to Ton from comment #13)
> aleth, would you say it's safe to apply any of these fonts, or is there any
> reason not to?

I don't think it's unsafe. It's just that I'm not sure there's agreement on the change and nobody has prepared a patch. Website changes have basically been pending for the next, much-delayed release...

I've added it to the whiteboard for now.

Comment 15

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

So what’s needed to get this fixed at last? Can I be of help?

Comment 16

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

IMO, this should not take 3 years to fix and it has a side effect on other Mozilla and font related bugs (like bug 1249041).

Can anyone please act? What's so hard about changing to Open Sans? (Plus: I don't think there was a long discussion nor agreement when introducing the Sacco-Vanzetti font either.)

Comment 17

[aleth [:aleth]]

(In reply to Ton from comment #16)
> IMO, this should not take 3 years to fix and it has a side effect on other
> Mozilla and font related bugs (like bug 1249041).

I don't see how https://advocacy.mozilla.org/ is related.

> Can anyone please act? What's so hard about changing to Open Sans? (Plus: I
> don't think there was a long discussion nor agreement when introducing the
> Sacco-Vanzetti font either.)

There are only so many volunteers with only so much time and so far this bug has simply not been a priority. 

If you'd really like to help, the best way to speed this up would be to grab the website repo from https://hg.instantbird.org/websites/, make the change, and attach a patch to this bug. (If I recall correctly, the font is referenced in a number of different places, so it's not completely trivial.)

Comment 18

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

We're not going to fix this since Instantbird is no longer developed.