Ubuntu
mozilla-firefox package

Font rendering problem in epiphany, firefox, thunderbird, etc.

Asked by Noumaan Yaqoob

I have filed a bug report on launchpad. I thought it would be nice to copy paste it here.

I read plenty of Urdu web pages each day. When I was using Breezy I had no trouble viewing Urdu web pages or editing my files in Urdu. But in Dapper I am having many problems:

   1. All web browsers totally ignore the Urdu fonts. I have added fonts in .fonts, /usr/share/fonts and fonts:/// folders. Used fc-cache and followed instructions ubuntu-desktop guide many times. but still No browser not even thunderbird would display them.
   2. When I installed microsoft fonts including Tahoma these browsers display Urdu web pages in msfonts because Tahoma is what urdu webmasters use on their pages as the last font option.
   3. I can write in urdu using gEdit which recognizes the Urdu fonts but it is unable to render them properly.

I have installed

    * language-support-ur
    * language-pack-ur
    * language-pack-ur-base
    * language-pack-gnome-ur
    * language-pack-gnome-ur-base

But I am still unable to read urdu webpages. I tried forcing firefox by adding Urdu fonts in Preferences > Content > fonts & colors > Advanced. I even unchecked the box "allow pages to chose their own fonts". But still firefox wouldn't display these pages in urdu fonts.

Urdu fonts that I am using are:

    * Nafees Web Naskh
      http://www.crulp.org/nafeesWebNaskh.html
    * Urdu Naskh Asiatype
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/fontinstall/popupwin.shtml to install this font I install it on windows and copy paste it in ubuntu.
    * Tahoma and msttcorefonts.

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Ubuntu mozilla-firefox Edit question
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Noumaan Yaqoob
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Revision history for this message
Noumaan Yaqoob (noumaan) said : 		#1

This problem doesn't occur in Konqueror which uses KHTML as rendering engine. It also doesn't occur in Galeon which is a Gecko based web browser.

Epiphany has the problem.
Firefox ubuntu built and the one I downloaded and installed from mozilla.org both had the problem.

Revision history for this message
Noumaan Yaqoob (noumaan) said : 		#2

I installed Breezy on another partition Breezy didn't has any problem with fonts. This time Firefox was working all right with Urdu fonts but when I downloaded and installed Epiphany on Breezy it showed the same symptoms that I am seeing in Dapper.

Revision history for this message
Noumaan Yaqoob (noumaan) said : 		#3

It seems that by default Ubuntu Dapper distributes firefox with pango enabled for selective locales only. Adding the line

MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0

in /etc/environment

has resolved the problem for me. But I think that there must be some permanant solution to this problem so that new Linux converts donts face this problem.