Author Topic: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!  (Read 14154 times)

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
This is not specifically a Firefox issue (as best as I can tell) but since it impacts Firefox (17.0.11) only on my machine I'm posting in this group.

Alright...so I've been using Alex's WorkPlace Sans font family for a looooong time...last version was the 0.91 drop...recently I noticed that 1.01 was out...went out, grabbed the bitmap and non-bitmapped versions...installed them on my system (one at a time of course), re-booted, only to scream in horror (well, not quite, but you get the point...LOL) when I saw the nearly illegible Firefox menus once Firefox was restarted.

Through some experimentation I discoverd that changing the custom setting of gfx.os2.font.hinting=3 to something like 2 or 1 makes it look better, but certainly nowhere near what my current 0.91 version looks like with it being set to 3.

So am I missing something on my machine to make this latest font drop work correctly? Or perhaps, do I have some setting somewhere that should be re-set/turned-off?

I certainly have this font specified in my userChrome.css file, here is a section that controls the font and sizing used for the menus and menubar:

=== START ===

/* this controls the MENUBAR entries */
menubar {
  font-family: workplace sans !important;
  font-size: 16px !important;
}

/* this controls the actual listing of MENU headers */
menu {
  font-family: workplace sans !important;
  font-weight: bold !important;
  font-size: 16px !important;
}

....
=== STOP ===

Thanks everyone!
-Dariusz

Dave Yeo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4788
  • Karma: +99/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2016, 05:40:28 am »
What happens if you remove your userChrome.css? And what version of mzfntcfgft are you using? I did release a couple of test builds of freetype that might have affects such as this.
Here FF17.0.11 with Alex's latest Workplace Sans looks fine.

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #2 on: May 26, 2016, 04:14:57 am »
Hi Dave!

What happens if you remove your userChrome.css? And what version of mzfntcfgft are you using? I did release a couple of test builds of freetype that might have affects such as this.
Here FF17.0.11 with Alex's latest Workplace Sans looks fine.

WarpIn shows version 2.5.4.0 of MZFNTCFGFT_RUNTIME installed...it is dated 31/12/2014. I have a newer ZIP file (mzfntcfgft_runtime_20150829.zip) drop, the included readme states:

=== START ===
This is a build of freetyp2.dll, freetyp6.dll and fntcfg2.dll which are required by various builds of Mozilla and other progams. Updated to freetype 2.60. Dependencies on Z and png dropped.
=== STOP ===

Checking Bitbucket it looks like this is the latest release. Should I be running that instead? I never installed it because I was trying to keep my WarpIn stuff in sync and so did not want the ZIP file contents overlaying the latest WarpIn release.

Regarding userChrome.css delete...I will try that next.

Dave Yeo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4788
  • Karma: +99/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #3 on: May 26, 2016, 06:39:13 am »
Probably what your running is good enough though could quickly test by unzipping freetyp2.dll into your Firefox program directory, assuming you have a dot at the beginning of LIBPATH.

Alex Taylor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 387
  • Karma: +5/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #4 on: May 26, 2016, 04:37:08 pm »
Comparative screen shots would help to understand what exactly you are seeing and (possibly) why.

You say you downloaded both the bitmapped and non bitmapped versions.  Which did you install? They can't both be installed (well, not successfully anyway).

Your reaction certainly suggests you have the non bitmapped versions installed.  Did you have the bitmapped versions installed before?

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2016, 01:13:56 am »
Hi Alex,

Comparative screen shots would help to understand what exactly you are seeing and (possibly) why.

You say you downloaded both the bitmapped and non bitmapped versions.  Which did you install? They can't both be installed (well, not successfully anyway).

Your reaction certainly suggests you have the non bitmapped versions installed.  Did you have the bitmapped versions installed before?

Correct, I never try to fix the two font releases, it is either the pure TTF or the pure bitmapped enhanced version. Right now I'm running TTF only.

OK, so here are the screenshots as attachments, wish I could in-line them but that seems to be only possible with a URL link, maybe I'm missing something though? lol

So, going by the filenames:

1) FF17_workplace_ttf_091.jpg - my current working font setup
2) FF17_workplace_ttf_101.jpg - the "bad" setup with the new 1.01 font release
3) FF17_workplace_ttf_101_userchrome_gone_fntcfgOLD.jpg - userChrome.css file gone, and using the old fntcfg
4) FF17_workplace_ttf_101_userchrome_gone_fntcfgNEW.jpg - userChrome.css file gone, and using the new fntcfg

So a couple of immediate findings:

1) dropping userChrome.css appears to have a significant impact, the font choices default to what FF is setup to use on our platform
2) there do not appear to be any differences between OLD and NEW fntcfg releases





Alex Taylor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 387
  • Karma: +5/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2016, 01:55:23 pm »
The problem is evidently in the rendering of Workplace Sans Bold.  In the second screenshot, it appears as though Firefox is actually drawing Workplace Sans Regular and attempting to 'fake bold' it through simulation.  I can only guess that it's doing this because mzfntcfgft is unable to find or load the actual Workplace Sans Bold font.

Silvan Scherrer

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 200
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #7 on: May 27, 2016, 02:19:46 pm »
The problem is evidently in the rendering of Workplace Sans Bold.  In the second screenshot, it appears as though Firefox is actually drawing Workplace Sans Regular and attempting to 'fake bold' it through simulation.  I can only guess that it's doing this because mzfntcfgft is unable to find or load the actual Workplace Sans Bold font.
I bet latest Firefox with the complete fontconfig/freetype combination does it way better.

regards
Silvan
kind regards
Silvan
CTO bww bitwise works GmbH

Please help us with donations, so we can further work on OS/2 based projects. Our Shop is at https://www.bitwiseworks.com/shop/index.php

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2016, 05:34:07 am »
The problem is evidently in the rendering of Workplace Sans Bold...I can only guess that it's doing this because mzfntcfgft is unable to find or load the actual Workplace Sans Bold font.

I agree, that is certainly what it looks like. What is strange is that the BOLD version of the font is certainly present in the \psfonts directory, here are all of the WPS*.ttf files that I have:

=== START ===
[G:\psfonts]dir wpsu*

The volume label in drive G is OS2.
The Volume Serial Number is xxxx:xxxx.
Directory of G:\psfonts

 3-28-16   1:43a    163016           0  wpsu.ttf
10-16-12  11:55a     59984           0  wpsu.ttf.0_91
 3-28-16   1:43a    163016           0  wpsu.ttf.1_01
 8-15-15   3:43a     96328           0  wpsu.ttf.bitmap-1_00
 3-28-16   1:47a    183468           0  wpsu.ttf.bitmap_1_01
 3-28-16   1:44a    144696           0  wpsub.ttf
10-17-12   2:00p     56700           0  wpsub.ttf.0_91
 3-28-16   1:44a    144696           0  wpsub.ttf.1_01
 8-15-15   3:51a     97736           0  wpsub.ttf.bitmap-1_00
 3-28-16   1:48a    176356           0  wpsub.ttf.bitmap_1_01
10-16-12  11:57a    168948           0  wpsul.ttf
10-16-12  11:57a    168948           0  wpsul.ttf.0_91
       12 file(s)    1623892 bytes used
                   4579819 K bytes free
=== STOP ===

The WPS font browser folder certainly shows the BOLD version and selecting it opens up a sample window.

What else could I check? I suppose I could also un-install that particular font and re-install?

Dave Yeo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4788
  • Karma: +99/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #9 on: May 28, 2016, 07:38:14 am »
It might be worth trying to uninstall and re-install. When I updated to 38esr and the new (real) fontconfig, WorkplaceSans looked horrible, or maybe the fallback looked horrible, and even the utilities didn't see the bold version. I updated to the latest and then things went back to normal.

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #10 on: May 28, 2016, 04:47:32 pm »
It might be worth trying to uninstall and re-install....

Yup, just tested that theory out. Un-installed the BOLD font, re-boted, re-installed and re-booted again (just to be on the safe side). Re-enabled my userChrome.css and....back to the "ugly" BOLD font...so for now I'm simply going back to 0.91 release given that BETA7 of FF38 is out and it's probably time to start getting ready for full-time use.

In the end it looks like the 1.01 release BOLD, for whatever reson, is not being recognized as the BOLD font. I did check the registry, all places where wpsu.ttf was showing the new wpsub.ttf showed up as well.

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I'll continue monitor this thread in case any new ideas pop-up...

Alex Taylor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 387
  • Karma: +5/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #11 on: May 30, 2016, 12:28:07 pm »
Actually, I have to stand corrected.  There seems to be a serious problem in the auto-generated hinting in Workplace Sans Bold.  It only manifests on a couple of sizes (mainly 13 & 14 ppm), which happen to be the ones which are overridden by the bitmaps in the bitmapped versions.  It also didn't show up on my usual test setup because those sizes don't get used by Mozilla on my system.

This evidently crept in due to a combination of switching from TypeTool 3 to FontLab Studio 5, and trying to add more intelligent hinting parameters.  It seems to work fine in the regular weight, but the bold weight just gets messed up.  Since I doubt I can fix the hinting, I think I'll simply leave the next releases un-hinted (as older versions, IIRC including 0.91, used to be).

So the font probably is getting loaded, it's just that the hinting is causing badly mangled rendering at those sizes.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2016, 12:29:49 pm by Alex Taylor »

Alex Taylor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 387
  • Karma: +5/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #12 on: June 18, 2016, 01:20:43 pm »
Version 1.002 is now available (Hobbes incoming), which hopefully fixes this issue.

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Firefox and latest WorkplaceSans font...something's not right!
« Reply #13 on: June 26, 2016, 04:18:51 am »
Alex!

Thank you sir...looks great here, both standard and bitmapped.

Now I actually get to see the difference, thumbs-up, I like the changes, looks slightly "wider" and cleaner.