OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Internet

New Browser Delay Discussion

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Lars:
Dooble as downloaded from Netlabs Exp works for me.
But I am still using eCS.
Maybe I also have some missing prerequisite component already installed, who knows.

Dmitriy Kuminov:

--- Quote from: Doug Bissett on April 25, 2022, 06:35:55 am ---Well, that is certainly not ready to be put in the release repo. I can't even read Help-> Documentation, or Help-> Release notes. The pictures seem fine, but the text consists of a line, or blank. I tried on more than one system, with the same results.

--- End quote ---

This has nothing to do with Dooble or Chromium or Qt. It's the fontconfig (mis)configuration. The Ghostscript libraries (used by CUPS if you have it installed) install some really outdated legacy PostScript fonts like Nimbus which are not Unicode aware. This broken Nimbus is then used as a default (!) font in the system (because of some fontconfig magic). But even if you would get rid of it, you still have outdated non-Unicode Type1 Times New Roman font supplied by OS/2 since ages which gets selected as a default for the "serif" family by fontconfig. And since Chromium/Qt/Google requests "serif" as the standard font for web content by default, Times New Roman gets selected and this makes many pages (including Dooble Documentation) lack any text. Note that if you remove this Times New Roman (TNR.PFB) and friends from /PSFONTS, the mentioned Nimbus will be selected for "serif" with the same effect — lack of Unicode support.

A proper solution is to fine-tune fontconfig for OS/2 so that it ignores Type1 in favour of modern TTF (e.g. ArcaOS comes with the nice Droid family IIRC which works just fine with Dooble). But this isn't an easy task, it needs time to sort things out. As a time being, there are two possible workarounds:

1. Install a well-known font family that has a higher priority in fontconfig (the DejaVu family works great here). This is a preferred solution as it will fix not only Dooble but any Qt/Chromium application.
2. Go to Dooble Settings, Web page, Fonts group, and replace all Nimbus/Times New Roman entries with Droid or any other font that works with Unicode (i.e. not standard OS/2 Type1 fonts).

Perhaps worth mentioning in the Readme.

PS. You can easily check which font Qt will use for a given family request by doing `fc-match FAMILY` on the command line. You may need to run `fc-cache -f` to rescan your fonts after you toss them around.

PPS. Here's the fontconfig ticket, for future reference https://github.com/bitwiseworks/fontconfig-os2/issues/1

Doug Bissett:

--- Quote ---This has nothing to do with Dooble or Chromium or Qt. It's the fontconfig (mis)configuration. The Ghostscript libraries (used by CUPS if you have it installed) install some really outdated legacy PostScript fonts like Nimbus which are not Unicode aware. This broken Nimbus is then used as a default (!) font in the system (because of some fontconfig magic). But even if you would get rid of it, you still have outdated non-Unicode Type1 Times New Roman font supplied by OS/2 since ages which gets selected as a default for the "serif" family by fontconfig. And since Chromium/Qt/Google requests "serif" as the standard font for web content by default, Times New Roman gets selected and this makes many pages (including Dooble Documentation) lack any text. Note that if you remove this Times New Roman (TNR.PFB) and friends from /PSFONTS, the mentioned Nimbus will be selected for "serif" with the same effect — lack of Unicode support.
--- End quote ---

This seems to describe it. Note, that I am using a test version of ArcaOS 5.1, so it would seem that some adjustments need to be made, before 5.1 is released.


--- Quote ---A proper solution is to fine-tune fontconfig for OS/2 so that it ignores Type1 in favour of modern TTF (e.g. ArcaOS comes with the nice Droid family IIRC which works just fine with Dooble). But this isn't an easy task, it needs time to sort things out
--- End quote ---

That makes sense, but I have never played around with that stuff, and I have no idea what needs to be done. Can somebody expand on that, please.


--- Quote ---Perhaps worth mentioning in the Readme.
--- End quote ---

I would consider that to be an essential part of the Readme.


--- Quote ---PS. You can easily check which font Qt will use for a given family request by doing `fc-match FAMILY` on the command line.
--- End quote ---

Result:
[C:\DESKTOP]fc-match FAMILY
n019003l.pfb: "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"

I will see if I can figure out the "workarounds".

THANKS...

Doug Bissett:

--- Quote ---2. Go to Dooble Settings, Web page, Fonts group, and replace all Nimbus/Times New Roman entries with Droid or any other font that works with Unicode (i.e. not standard OS/2 Type1 fonts).
--- End quote ---

Okay, I was able to replace the "bad" fonts with DROID fonts (already installed in ArcaOS). Now, it seems to be working properly.

Thanks.

Wayne A. Smith:

--- Quote from: Dmitriy Kuminov on April 17, 2022, 01:09:20 am ---

I was virtually paralysed when Russia invaded Ukraine and started a war by the end of February. I couldn’t do anything besides thinking on how catastrophic this is for everyone. When I caught my breath I realised that I can’t stand it any longer and need to leave Russia ASAP. It’s not only that it became impossible to do business due to all the sanctions. It’s mostly because I couldn’t tolerate what’s going on. I couldn’t be part of the country that turned into 1930’s Germany (even though I was born there and spent there all my entire life except one year). The least I could do is leave. So I was completely occupied with organising an immediate relocation (with the help of my friends, including some OS/2 folks, as well as some guys from the independent news outlet I also work for).

As I was getting closer to the leave, I got some confidence back and made myself work on the browser a bit between solving numerous move out problems. I don’t understand why this became a subject to criticism as if it were better if hadn’t done this. A few days ago I finally left Russia and plan to stay in Turkey for a while. Currently I’m a person with no home and no residence permit anywhere but Russia (where I’m not going to get back) — and this exposes a huge number of every day problems, starting from inability to have a bank account (and therefore bank cards) to prohibition to stay in a country for more than three months in a row (so I need to move between countries until I get a permit). So until this is solved somehow, my life situation remains volatile and my resources are very limited (in addition to limitations that were already there before the war).



--- End quote ---

What are your residence plans, Dmitriy?

While here in the USA immigration is a "hot issue", it appears that refugees from Ukraine, Russia (and, with limitations, Afghanistan) are favored.  I haven't practiced Immigration Law for decades, but I could look into it if interested.  Just a thought.

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