font-family: monospace renders incorrectly on macOS

On Tor Browser 11.0.4 on macOS 10.15.7, any element with font-family: monospace doesn't render correctly: it uses Times or Helvetica instead, depending on context. This doesn't seem to happen on Linux. I haven't had time to bisect to determine when this bug started happening. It also showed up on a recent alpha; not sure which version exactly.

An easy way to see this is to create a .txt file with some text and open it using a file:/// URL. Observe that it is not displayed with a monospaced font. Open the Inspector, and observe that under "Fonts Used", the font is not a monospaced font. This affects even the rendering of monospaced HTML and CSS code displayed within the Inspector itself. Some webpages with monospaced text happen to display correctly due to explicitly named fonts in their CSS addition to the monospace name.

Explicitly adding "Menlo" to font.system.whitelist appears to work around the problem.

e9dbacf3 seems to have introduced the font change to Menlo on macOS. The overrides in 266d8540 happened later, interacting to produce the bug. The default font.system.whitelist doesn't include Menlo, and the macOS setting for font.name-list.monospace.x-unicode does include Courier, which is whitelisted, but it looks like the default language ends up being x-western, at least for my installation.

Very few of the other monospace font name lists are updated to include only whitelisted fonts. If there's some reason to not whitelist Menlo, then many other settings may need to be changed.

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mentioned in issue #41016 (closed)

mentioned in issue #41004 (closed)

#40398 (comment 2733987) - richard's first listed item

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assigned to @pierov

marked #41016 (closed) as a duplicate of this issue

marked this issue as related to #41016 (closed)

mentioned in issue #40910 (closed)

@thorin since I'm at it: do font.name-list.* preferences matter?

I think so, but IANAE. I was thinking about it earlier. Probably not for entropy, but it looks like we only change a few (most of the bundled fonts match optional mac downloads so probably already match), but in reality we should ensure each one matches what is in the whitelist, and consistently, e.g. not have Courier for some and Menlo for others. At least that way we minimize broken script support

TBH, we should ask someone like jfkthame, but he's very hard to get hold of. Easy to talk to in bugzilla, but I reckon it needs someone with some gravitas like tor project users or maybe tom to reach out and ask a mozilla font person, maybe henri?

Side Note: We should add Consolas to Windows whitelist sooner rather than later (it's actually a nicer font TBH)

• FF99 changed a default font - consolas instead of courier new
  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713680
  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1607913

I think so, but IANAE. I was thinking about it earlier. Probably not for entropy, but it looks like we only change a few (most of the bundled fonts match optional mac downloads so probably already match), but in reality we should ensure each one matches what is in the whitelist, and consistently, e.g. not have Courier for some and Menlo for others. At least that way we minimize broken script support

I see, thank you anyway!

Side Note: We should add Consolas to Windows whitelist sooner rather than later (it's actually a nicer font TBH)

• FF99 changed a default font - consolas instead of courier new
  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713680
  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1607913

Wow, opened 11 years ago, and closed 3 months ago!

We could allow it immediately.

We could allow it immediately

yup, and nothing else to change AFAICT

EDIT: except I would think we should wait for ESR102 as a flag day

I am a klutz

sooner rather than later

we should wait for ESR102 as a flag day

definitely the second option

Uhm, we could just open a new issue (and relate it to ESR-102).

Anyway, the name-list preferences seem to be used in browser/components/preferences/dialogs/fonts.js. They seem to be linked to Advanced font settings (hence also the language), but they don't have an associated element.

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If we hear back from a moz font person

• .Helvetica Neue DeskInterface can be dropped AFAIK, it maps to Helvetica Neue (AFAIK)
• . = not a system font, and . = deprecated
  • e.g. https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D146572
  • .Helvetica Neue DeskInterface not listed in this list for example

I think the font name is pretty old and a hangover from the 2000s

Edit: ye olde tor ticket: #17661 (closed) - note Firefox min requirements now are macOS 10.12

mentioned in merge request !304 (merged)

mentioned in issue #41018 (closed)

I think we should create a more general font clean-up issue.

Closing this one, for the moment, since now Menlo is enabled.

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mentioned in issue #40849 (closed)

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mentioned in merge request tor-browser-build!483 (merged)