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OS/2 - Technical => Internet => Topic started by: RobertM on 2008.08.13, 02:50:27

Title: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: RobertM on 2008.08.13, 02:50:27
Hey everyone,

So... I "upgraded" to Firefox 3.0 and then Firefox 3.0.1 (upgraded is in quotes because I actually still have and use Firefox 2.0.0.15).

I am running into two weird issues with both FF3 builds that did not happen in FF2.


<P><font face="Arial Bold Italic">Arial Bold Italic</font>
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: RobertM on 2008.08.13, 03:12:35
Here are screenshots from both browsers... both browsers open to the same size, load the same pages, etc...

I used PMView to cut the image from the FF2 screenshot and overlay it on the FF3 screenshot. The image size difference is roughly 91% - dunno why.

The images attached are:
- BOTH (overlaid as described above)
- FF3 (wrong size... if you d/l the screenshot and use PMView to determine the size, you should get 893px)

-FF2 (right size... if you d/l the screenshot and use PMView to determine the size, you should get 980px).

The HTML has all the correct sizes in it...

Thanks gang,
Robert
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: warpcafe on 2008.08.13, 10:34:17
Hi Robert,

did you check readmes or other FAQ/known-bugs infos? And - as the FF ports are maintained by Peter Weilbacher - perhaps you can check with him? Now for my assumptions:
What comes to mind in that regard almost immediately is the Innotek FontEngine. Perhaps "they" (FFx team/porter) did change something to the way the IFE settings are stored in the registry?
FWIW, I remember that sometime back, they changed the registry branch used from HKCU (user-part, was used until 2.40 version) to HKLM (machine-part) which I found to be "wrong", well, but... anyway. Perhaps the readmes or other docs contain a note regarding the OS/2 ports font stuff?

Cheers, HTH,
Thomas
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: jep on 2008.08.13, 10:55:47
Hello,

I've also experienced similar problems, could e.g. see how the browser recalculated the page size and scaled it down after load was complete. (Very obvious on a slow computer)

If i remember correctly, aren't they moving away from font rendering engine within FireFox for OS/2-eCS?

I've since switched to Firefox 3.1, though it is "pre alpha" and it is much better than 3.0.x, I can't say if it release the memory back to the OS better, but so far, a bit further in the right direction. I haven't experienced more problems in it than in FF2 or FF3.0 at least, printing untested though.

//Jan-Erik
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: herwigb on 2008.08.13, 11:26:30
Just for the records: Firefox 3.x DOES NOT USE the Innotek Fontengine for font rendering.

Kind regards,
Herwig
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2008.08.13, 18:53:25
Yeah, it says so on the Warpzilla page. The Font rendering in FFX is done with the Cairo libraries, so remove all references to Firefox from the IFE keys.
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: warpcafe on 2008.08.13, 19:00:17
Hi,

Quote from: herwigb on 2008.08.13, 11:26:30
Just for the records: Firefox 3.x DOES NOT USE the Innotek Fontengine for font rendering.

Kind regards,
Herwig

That might explain. ;) At least my assumption was correct that FFx3 handles something different in regards to the IFE. :) And now that you told it... I seem to remember it was mentioned in either the release notes or the announcement.

Regards,
Thomas
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: RobertM on 2008.08.13, 21:23:35
Quote from: warpcafe on 2008.08.13, 10:34:17
Hi Robert,

did you check readmes or other FAQ/known-bugs infos? And - as the FF ports are maintained by Peter Weilbacher - perhaps you can check with him?

I was going to... but first I wanted to see if it was specific to my machine, or if it was some idiotic setting someplace that I missed before I bugged him. Saw nothing in the readme about this issue (or in the bugs on bugzilla - those all seemed to be related to showing the correct fonts, but too thick, too blurry or too something - but correct font used nonetheless).


Here's the weird thing. I did some more tests...

http://www.aibuiltpc.com/FFFontTest2.html

If I use style sheets and set font-family to Arial, and font-style to italic, it works if I set font-weight to bold, that works (or any combination thereof for Arial or Arial Black).

If I use "regular" HTML (and select the working font) such as:
<font name="Arial"><b>Bolded Arial</b></font>

Then that works as well.

If you go to the test page, the first section marks which ones display correctly, and which ones do not (uses default browser serif font - in my case Times New Roman)... the second and third sections using different methods work - but I think that is because they are using the working font (Arial, Arial Black) and the browser is bolding or italicizing them (instead of grabbing the bold or italic version).

[/quote]
Quote from: herwigb on 2008.08.13, 11:26:30
Just for the records: Firefox 3.x DOES NOT USE the Innotek Fontengine for font rendering.

Kind regards,
Herwig

HRMPH! Well, I thought I was on to something (I am stuck with IFE2.40 on this machine... and neither I nor anyone here could figure out why, short of a big INI problem - which I am too lazy to resolve).

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.08.13, 18:53:25
Yeah, it says so on the Warpzilla page. The Font rendering in FFX is done with the Cairo libraries, so remove all references to Firefox from the IFE keys.

Cant, I still use FF2 (I must use it till the resize issue at the least is resolved - that and FireFTP doesnt run on FF2 anymore (gotta find the older version that does).

But that brings up questions... what version of Cairo should be installed on the system? Or is the required code built into the browser?

Thomas, herwigb, saijin... Thanks to all of you for your help! Now, hopefully someone can figure out the scaling issue. I will send Peter an email and see what he says...

Rob

Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2008.08.13, 21:40:34
Well, I noticed that if you turn off the IFE for firefox, it seems to render much quicker. I posted a while back that FF3 was disappointingly slow, and now I guess we know why. Granted, its still slower to render than FF3 on Windows or Linux or OSX, but its improved.

I don't think the Cairo runtime need be installed Robert, but for good practice I always make sure I have the most recent versions of that and SDL installed.

Currently writing from gOS, I was silently going to defect from the eCS camp because I was getting pissed at a few things, but I'm realizing that besides having a larger program library, Linux is pretty much epic fail next to eCS. That's kinda sad :\ Now to go put eCS back on and get this GNU crap the hell off my computer.
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: jep on 2008.08.14, 09:28:29
Hello Saijin_Naib,

Quote
Currently writing from gOS, I was silently going to defect from the eCS camp because I was getting pissed at a few things, but I'm realizing that besides having a larger program library, Linux is pretty much epic fail next to eCS. That's kinda sad :\ Now to go put eCS back on and get this GNU crap the hell off my computer.

Sum it up quite well I think.

btw Welcome "back" Saijin_Naib ;D
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: warpcafe on 2008.08.14, 10:29:55
Hi all,

the basic problem is that the IFE "handles" the active/inactive state on a per-executable basis, meaning: The exe name. Thus, if both FFx2 and FFx3 have a "firefox.exe", it will be impossible to have FFx2 USE the IFE and FFx3 NOT USE the IFE.
A workaround would be to rename the executables... perhaps. I'm not aware of any possible implications - if that works, so to say.

Now for the topic ob "being stuck with 2.40" version of the IFE... what is that about? Perhaps we can sort this out somehow. Note that 2.40 uses the HKEY_CURRENT_USER path for stroing the keys, while the later one (is that 2.60?) uses the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE "tree"... Robert, feel free to open a new thread for that "big INI problem", and I'll try to investigate on it.

Cheers,
Thomas
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: Doodle on 2008.08.14, 12:27:24
Quote from: RobertM on 2008.08.13, 21:23:35

But that brings up questions... what version of Cairo should be installed on the system? Or is the required code built into the browser?


Firefox has its own Cairo library compiled into the Firefox executable.
So, it doesn't matter which Cairo runtime DLLs you have installed (it doesn't matter if you have the Cairo runtime DLLs installed at all), Firefox uses its own.

The Cairo runtime DLLs are (currently) only used by some DSSaver modules and WPSWizard.

Doodle
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2008.08.14, 12:29:08
I don't know if anyone else has done this, but I've updated and installed the most recent FreeType/2 engine (http://www.ecomstation.it/ecsoft2/prog.php?progid=508&name=FreeType%2F2&sys=os2+ecomstation) to OS/2 and used the FT2GUI (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-viewer?sh=1&fname=/pub/os2/util/font/ft2gui102.zip) application to set my font engine to FreeType/2 (http://www.ecomstation.it/ecsoft2/prog.php?progid=508&name=FreeType%2F2&sys=os2+ecomstation) instead of the IBM TrueType engine. This seems to have improved font handing/rendering everywhere, including the WPS and has lead to Firefox rendering fonts a little more sensibly. That and I replaced all the OS/2 TTF fonts with Windows TTF fonts (imported my whole windows Fonts directory). All seems well so far.

Sorry you are stuck with 2.40 Robert! That version always caused my internet sessions to be very short lived. I'm glad I have it off now and FFX3 seems to be stable, well, until I try and watch flash videos atleast.
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: RobertM on 2008.08.14, 16:45:53
Quote from: warpcafe on 2008.08.14, 10:29:55
Hi all,

the basic problem is that the IFE "handles" the active/inactive state on a per-executable basis, meaning: The exe name. Thus, if both FFx2 and FFx3 have a "firefox.exe", it will be impossible to have FFx2 USE the IFE and FFx3 NOT USE the IFE.
A workaround would be to rename the executables... perhaps. I'm not aware of any possible implications - if that works, so to say.

Hi Thomas,

I am guessing that if no one else is experiencing font issues, then it may be something weird like that... I will try disabling IFE for FF or renaming FF3 and see what happens...

Has anyone else who is running FF3 tried the page on my site?

http://www.aibuiltpc.com/FFFontTest2.html

The first section should have two displayed correctly (Arial, and Arial Black), with the rest being displayed in the same font (whatever you have the default set to in FF3). All text in the second and third section should display correctly.

Quote from: warpcafe on 2008.08.14, 10:29:55
Now for the topic ob "being stuck with 2.40" version of the IFE... what is that about? Perhaps we can sort this out somehow. Note that 2.40 uses the HKEY_CURRENT_USER path for stroing the keys, while the later one (is that 2.60?) uses the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE "tree"... Robert, feel free to open a new thread for that "big INI problem", and I'll try to investigate on it.

Thanks Thomas... will start another thread... I am running into all sorts of issues when it comes to (upgrading) IFE, or opening folders with certain images or PDFs in them (WPS crashes, restarts without WPSWizard support).

And Doodle, Thomas, Saijin_Naib, everyone, thanks for your help,
Robert
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: warpcafe on 2008.08.14, 18:03:32
Hi Robert,

Quote from: RobertM on 2008.08.14, 16:45:53
Has anyone else who is running FF3 tried the page on my site?

not until 1 minute ago ;)
I must admit that it's FF3 on Windows (~XP SP2) - more precisely:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

However... yes, it displays just like what the text behind the font samples says ("...shows up as times new roman"). Does that help?

BTW - looking at your html source code... perhaps instead of doing something wrong, FFx3 rather does something "more precisely" than its ancestors? Who knows what Cairo is able to do? Scan the real font family from the TTF header and make it load the non-bold, non-italic "parent" font instead undless there are markups that tell it to bolden and/or italicize it?
Hmmm... just guessing here.

Regards,
Thomas
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: RobertM on 2008.08.15, 01:41:02
Quote from: warpcafe on 2008.08.14, 18:03:32
Hi Robert,

Quote from: RobertM on 2008.08.14, 16:45:53
Has anyone else who is running FF3 tried the page on my site?

not until 1 minute ago ;)
I must admit that it's FF3 on Windows (~XP SP2) - more precisely:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

However... yes, it displays just like what the text behind the font samples says ("...shows up as times new roman"). Does that help?

So, you are getting Times New Roman instead of Arial Bold, Arial Italic, etc in the first section? If so, that is really weird as the XP SP2 machine here is doing it correctly...

Quote from: warpcafe on 2008.08.14, 18:03:32
BTW - looking at your html source code... perhaps instead of doing something wrong, FFx3 rather does something "more precisely" than its ancestors? Who knows what Cairo is able to do? Scan the real font family from the TTF header and make it load the non-bold, non-italic "parent" font instead undless there are markups that tell it to bolden and/or italicize it?
Hmmm... just guessing here.

Regards,
Thomas

I thought about that - that's how I got the second and third section working. Here's the problems I see... I have each font installed (there's a separate file for Arial, Arial Bold, Arial Italic, etc)... so in the second and third methods (which work), the renderer is faking bold and italic itself instead of loading the bold or italic version.

I am wondering if this XP system here is using different fonts, or a font file that contains the variations built in.

It's really weird, but various programs seem to handle such things differently... for instance, in Embellish, you get to choose font by name:
- Arial
- Arial Bold
- Arial Italic
- Arial Bold Italic

While in others, you would have to choose Arial, then select Bold and/or Italic in the font control window...

Thus, I am wondering if Cairo/FF3 does not recognize that the fonts are from the same family, sees Arial Bold, finds the "Arial family" and doesnt see Bold linked to it - and then doesnt bother to check the rest of the font names... it would explain why the first ones in each category work, and not the rest.

Just rambling at this point... I'm at a loss. I think I'll send an email to Peter in a bit, and let you all know what he says...




On to the page content sizing issue (FF3 loads the page, then resizes all content... images, tables, text; to some smaller size)... has anyone else experienced that? If so, I will send a note to him about that as well... if not, I will see if it is something weird that is particular to this system...

Thanks,
Rob
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2008.08.15, 01:49:54
Robert, can you contact him and ask about what is going on when I minimized FF3 and when I go to restore it, it draws the window frames/controls but leaves the rendered page blank showing through to whatever window it's on top of? This is only cured by refreshing the page.
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: ddan on 2008.09.09, 20:08:36
Is there any way to change the fonts on FF3 _menus_ including address bar? These are in a hideous tiny Roman font, and for me, break the whole package.

Please restrict replies to within FF3, don't have / want the IFE complications.

Oh, and for once I can agree with Saijin_Naib: FF3 is MUCH slower than PmW-Fx 1.5, noticeable lag on bookmark menus and page rendering, though latter may be because I've left some web "feature" running (though have noscript and prefbar as in previous version), or haven't moved the cache to RAMFS, anyway it's a definite step backward but probably tolerable IF the menus and bookmarks were readable.
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: RobertM on 2008.09.10, 02:11:48
Hey all,

It looks like Peter W. is on top of the font issue (sorry, ddan, not yours)...

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/h-viewer.php?dir=/pub/os2/dev/util&file=mzfntcfgft_20080806.zip&backto=%2Fh-browse.php%3Fdir%3D%2Fpub%2Fnew%26sort%3Ddate


Rob
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: warpcafe on 2008.09.11, 00:28:43
Hi ddan,

Quote from: ddan on 2008.09.09, 20:08:36
Is there any way to change the fonts on FF3 _menus_ including address bar? These are in a hideous tiny Roman font, and for me, break the whole package.

ehhh... phew... there's a voice in the back of my head whispering "chrome"... but I can't remember if that applies to FF and especially FF3 for heaven's sake. I'm getting too old I guess.
Okay, listen: I remember that I once "patched" the Thunderbird UI config for a customer and (keeping fingers crossed) I *think* there were also settings for the font. Let me check if that is true and if that can be used in FF3.
Then, on the other hand, did you check if drag-n-drop'in a font from OS/2s font palette onto the FF3 menu bar works? :)) Dunno if that setting then is persisted correctly though. And sorry for not having OS/2|eCS at hand, otherwise I would have checked it immediately... sigh.

Cheers,
Thomas
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: RobertM on 2008.09.11, 02:00:21
Quote from: warpcafe on 2008.09.11, 00:28:43
Hi ddan,

Quote from: ddan on 2008.09.09, 20:08:36
Is there any way to change the fonts on FF3 _menus_ including address bar? These are in a hideous tiny Roman font, and for me, break the whole package.

ehhh... phew... there's a voice in the back of my head whispering "chrome"... but I can't remember if that applies to FF and especially FF3 for heaven's sake. I'm getting too old I guess.

Ugh... wish I knew the answer to that. I know the FF1.x builds would honor the WPS settings (and what a mess that would make if the menus were set to "System VIO" or similar font). I think (but could be horrendously mistaken) that FF2 did as well. FF3 on mine is using Times Roman instead of Arial as FF2 does.

Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2008.09.11, 02:05:23
Has anyone noticed some improper spacing or garbage characters when using the windows or other TTF files (Helvetica instead of Helv Times New Roman instead of Tmns Rmn) etc? I seem to be having some oddities with that (I've set them manually in Firefox for my encoding).
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: RobertM on 2008.09.11, 02:33:13
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.09.11, 02:05:23
Has anyone noticed some improper spacing or garbage characters when using the windows or other TTF files (Helvetica instead of Helv Times New Roman instead of Tmns Rmn) etc? I seem to be having some oddities with that (I've set them manually in Firefox for my encoding).

I haven't tried it - but those fonts are very ancient, and might be missing kerning information that Cairo needs. I solely use them in WinOS2 at this point.
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: achain on 2008.09.11, 03:40:43
Quote from: warpcafe on 2008.09.11, 00:28:43
ehhh... phew... there's a voice in the back of my head whispering "chrome"... but I can't remember if that applies to FF and especially FF3 for heaven's sake. I'm getting too old I guess.

Preparing userChrome.css in the profile-directory/chrome/ is still valid to customize FF3.0 and SM2.0 cosmetic.
Title: Re: Firefox 3.x Font Issue?
Post by: ddan on 2008.09.12, 01:24:25
Achain, thanks for the tip. Got me to the right area; I DID use "The Google" and "Help" before asking here, but didn't find anything for the menus.

However, while I enlarged menu font size, greatly reduces the number of items due to MUCH too great of line spacing. Editing to use others in the example.css resulted in losing the menu size change, and no change at all.

Also, seems to get slower every time I invoke it. Bookmarks in folders take half a second to appear, with a long lag on the highlighting too. Scrolling to get to bookmarks doesn't exactly work, hops around and jumps back to top of list. Discovered that it doesn't clear address bar history at all regardless of Options setting, and it's VERY slow on overall UI rendering, though does seem faster at rendering content.

So, count me unimpressed for now. I'm not carping, but definitely needs more work. -- I'm fine with PmW-Fx 1.5, didn't like version 2 either.