Japanese font(s) look ugly on websites
During the dev meeting we got some feedback wrt to our new Japanese bundle. It was said that there are websites that look ugly using a localized build. I am not sure about the OS and the websites that are affected though.
Activity
A few things, by platform:
- Linux uses
NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf. I'm not sure why we ship the Simplified Chinese version of the font. But it's legible, though I haven't looked for differences/stuff that's broken very hard. - Under Windows, there's no fonts configured for Japanese (
about:preferences#content->Advanced), the drop-downs for Serif, Sans-serif, and Monospace are empty. I have no idea how Firefox handles fonts named in Japanese (eg:ＭＳ 明朝whitelisted asMS Mincho), but I can't select the fonts even though they're present on the system. Even theabout:torpage looks kind of horrible. - I don't have a Macintoy.
- Linux uses
http://ipafont.ipa.go.jp/index.html#en has a quirky license, but looks OK if we're willing to bloat the bundle size. Not sure if there's anything better.
Replying to yawning:
A few things, by platform:
- Linux uses
NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf. I'm not sure why we ship the Simplified Chinese version of the font. But it's legible, though I haven't looked for differences/stuff that's broken very hard.
The NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf font covers Japanese, Korean, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The "sc" refers to the fact that it defaults to Simplified Chinese character variants if the language has not been specified by a page.
- Under Windows, there's no fonts configured for Japanese (
about:preferences#content->Advanced), the drop-downs for Serif, Sans-serif, and Monospace are empty. I have no idea how Firefox handles fonts named in Japanese (eg:ＭＳ 明朝whitelisted asMS Mincho), but I can't select the fonts even though they're present on the system. Even theabout:torpage looks kind of horrible.
Right now on Windows (in the alpha) only MS Mincho is whitelisted, so that's the only Japanese font available. I will look into whether it would be possible to whitelist more Windows fonts. Are there some you would prefer?
- I don't have a Macintoy.
- Linux uses
Replying to arthuredelstein:
Replying to yawning:
A few things, by platform:
- Linux uses
NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf. I'm not sure why we ship the Simplified Chinese version of the font. But it's legible, though I haven't looked for differences/stuff that's broken very hard.
The NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf font covers Japanese, Korean, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The "sc" refers to the fact that it defaults to Simplified Chinese character variants if the language has not been specified by a page.
Ah ok. Shouldn't we be shipping a separate Noto variant for each ov the CJKV (+TC) locales that we have bundles for? By default, someone that's using the ja_JP bundle is likely going to hit pages with no language specifier that are in Japanese...
If the browser automagically handles all of this, that's great. I don't read Japanese content that much, so I have no idea how modern browsers handle this stuff. Also, Han Unification is Stupid, and should be destroyed.
- Under Windows, there's no fonts configured for Japanese (
about:preferences#content->Advanced), the drop-downs for Serif, Sans-serif, and Monospace are empty. I have no idea how Firefox handles fonts named in Japanese (eg:ＭＳ 明朝whitelisted asMS Mincho), but I can't select the fonts even though they're present on the system. Even theabout:torpage looks kind of horrible.
Right now on Windows (in the alpha) only MS Mincho is whitelisted, so that's the only Japanese font available. I will look into whether it would be possible to whitelist more Windows fonts. Are there some you would prefer?
Err. If MS Mincho is whitelisted, why isn't it being used? As in, with the ja_JP bundle on Windows, there are no fonts configured for Japanese at all. Likewise, if it's whitelisted, why can't I select it as my Serif font (It should at least appear in the dropdown...)?
I assume if I hack up my profile to use:
ＭＳ 明朝for my Serif andＭＳ ゴシックas my Sans-Serif font that things will actually look ok, but I haven't tried yet (Double widthＭ,Ｓ, single-widthIt's worth noting that despite the fonts having been shipped since Windows 3.1, we should not be whitelisting either if "the font has glyphs that changed between versions" is an issue.
ChangeLogs: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_%E3%82%B4%E3%82%B7%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_%E6%98%8E%E6%9C%9D
- Linux uses
Replying to yawning:
Replying to arthuredelstein:
Replying to yawning:
A few things, by platform:
- Linux uses
NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf. I'm not sure why we ship the Simplified Chinese version of the font. But it's legible, though I haven't looked for differences/stuff that's broken very hard.
The NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf font covers Japanese, Korean, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The "sc" refers to the fact that it defaults to Simplified Chinese character variants if the language has not been specified by a page.
Ah ok. Shouldn't we be shipping a separate Noto variant for each ov the CJKV (+TC) locales that we have bundles for? By default, someone that's using the ja_JP bundle is likely going to hit pages with no language specifier that are in Japanese...
That would be ideal, but it's difficult to implement because we're trying not to leak the user's locale. We would need to ensure that the CJKVsc and CJKVjp have the same apparent name exposed to Firefox, and the bounding rectangles for every character are the same for each variant. It might be possible.
If the browser automagically handles all of this, that's great. I don't read Japanese content that much, so I have no idea how modern browsers handle this stuff. Also, Han Unification is Stupid, and should be destroyed.
Agreed.
- Under Windows, there's no fonts configured for Japanese (
about:preferences#content->Advanced), the drop-downs for Serif, Sans-serif, and Monospace are empty. I have no idea how Firefox handles fonts named in Japanese (eg:ＭＳ 明朝whitelisted asMS Mincho), but I can't select the fonts even though they're present on the system. Even theabout:torpage looks kind of horrible.
Right now on Windows (in the alpha) only MS Mincho is whitelisted, so that's the only Japanese font available. I will look into whether it would be possible to whitelist more Windows fonts. Are there some you would prefer?
Err. If MS Mincho is whitelisted, why isn't it being used? As in, with the ja_JP bundle on Windows, there are no fonts configured for Japanese at all.
Oops, I got confused -- in Windows TBB 5.5.3a, there are actually four fonts whitelisted specifically for Japanese: MS Mincho, MS PMincho, MS Gothic, MS PGothic.
Here's a page to check that all four Japanese fonts are available to content pages:
https://arthuredelstein.github.io/tordemos/windows-fonts.html
I notice that both serif and sans-serif choose MS PGothic. This seems wrong, but it's true for vanilla Firefox as well.
On Windows, do you see important situations where TBB 5.5.3a Japanese text is worse than Firefox? Not that we shouldn't fix vanilla Firefox text rendering problems, but I want to fix TBB-specific problems first.
For example, ja.wikipedia.org looks basically identical on my Windows machines on Firefox and TBB.
Likewise, if it's whitelisted, why can't I select it as my Serif font (It should at least appear in the dropdown...)?
I don't know why the dropdown is failing.
I assume if I hack up my profile to use:
ＭＳ 明朝for my Serif andＭＳ ゴシックas my Sans-Serif font that things will actually look ok, but I haven't tried yet (Double widthＭ,Ｓ, single-widthThat would be very helpful if you find preference settings that make it look better for you.
It's worth noting that despite the fonts having been shipped since Windows 3.1, we should not be whitelisting either if "the font has glyphs that changed between versions" is an issue.
We decided, at this stage, not to try to protect users from that issue.
- Linux uses
I finally got around to digging more into this. Modifying the whitelist on a Windows 10 system to include
ＭＳ 明朝andＭＳ ゴシックresults in them being picked up and used to display Japanese.Because #16739 (moved) exists, I assume the problem here is "We only whitelisted the English display names of the fonts, which do not exist when using Japanese as the system locale".
The short term workaround would be to whitelist
-
ＭＳ 明朝(MS Mincho) -
ＭＳ ゴシック(MS Gothic) -
ＭＳ Ｐ明朝(MS PMincho) -
ＭＳ Ｐゴシック(MS PGothic)
Note:
Ｐis also double width. Past that we get to move on to fixing "those fonts look like shit", but this is a easy thing we should do (the fonts are already whitelisted, just not completely whitelisted).Trac:
Severity: N/A to Normal-
Replying to yawning:
I finally got around to digging more into this. Modifying the whitelist on a Windows 10 system to include
ＭＳ 明朝andＭＳ ゴシックresults in them being picked up and used to display Japanese.Because #16739 (moved) exists, I assume the problem here is "We only whitelisted the English display names of the fonts, which do not exist when using Japanese as the system locale".
The short term workaround would be to whitelist
-
ＭＳ 明朝(MS Mincho) -
ＭＳ ゴシック(MS Gothic) -
ＭＳ Ｐ明朝(MS PMincho) -
ＭＳ Ｐゴシック(MS PGothic)
Note:
Ｐis also double width. Past that we get to move on to fixing "those fonts look like shit", but this is a easy thing we should do (the fonts are already whitelisted, just not completely whitelisted).Thanks for tracking this down. I was unaware of this issue, but I will check other languages (such as Chinese) for similar problems and post a patch with the corrected whitelist.
-
I found a list of localized font names for Windows here: http://trigeminal.fmsinc.com/samples/font_choices.html
Here's a patch for review, where I have added the localized names for each CJK font to the font whitelist on Windows. I'm didn't find any localized font names for the non-CJK fonts included in this whitelist.
https://github.com/arthuredelstein/tor-browser/commit/17250
(I will also investigate if any localized font names are needed for OS X or Linux.)
Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, TorBrowserTeam201510R added
Status: new to needs_reviewReplying to arthuredelstein:
Here's a patch for review, where I have added the localized names for each CJK font to the font whitelist on Windows. I'm didn't find any localized font names for the non-CJK fonts included in this whitelist.
https://github.com/arthuredelstein/tor-browser/commit/17250
(I will also investigate if any localized font names are needed for OS X or Linux.)
The patch looks ok for Japanese/Windows.
I'm hesitant to call this fixed since our Japanese
about:torpage on Windows still looks horrific even when the correct fonts are specified, leading to poor first impressions and a bad out-of-the-box experience.There's an upstream issue discussing this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1016792
Is there a particular reason why we whitelist
YaHei/JhengHeibut notMeiryo/Malgun Gothic(Korean)? Availability across the fonts should be similar (Vista+).The
Meiryoinline box breakage documented in comment 7 was resolved in Firefox 40 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1157083).
Replying to yawning:
The patch looks ok for Japanese/Windows.
I'm hesitant to call this fixed since our Japanese
about:torpage on Windows still looks horrific even when the correct fonts are specified, leading to poor first impressions and a bad out-of-the-box experience.Is the above issue covered by #16735 (moved), or is there another issue with about:tor?
Replying to mcs:
Replying to yawning:
The patch looks ok for Japanese/Windows.
I'm hesitant to call this fixed since our Japanese
about:torpage on Windows still looks horrific even when the correct fonts are specified, leading to poor first impressions and a bad out-of-the-box experience.Is the above issue covered by #16735 (moved), or is there another issue with about:tor?
No, it's a separate issue. It renders correctly, but "Congratulations! This browser is configured to use Tor." looks terrible because a font that's not great to begin with is getting scaled up to a large size.
There's not much that can be done without changing which fonts we use, I don't think.
I posted a fix here: https://github.com/arthuredelstein/tor-browser/commits/17250+1 This branch contains two commits, one for this bug and one for #17661 (moved).
Note: these patches just expand the font whitelists for OS X and Windows.
Trac:
Status: needs_revision to needs_review
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201512 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201512R addedTrac:
Parent: 18097 to #18097 (moved)mentioned in issue #17661 (moved)
mentioned in issue #18097 (moved)
mentioned in issue tpo/applications/tor-browser#18097 (closed)
