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Bug 1830509 - Firefox poor font rendering
Summary: Firefox poor font rendering
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE of bug 1965684
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: fontconfig
Version: 34
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Akira TAGOH
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2020-05-02 11:15 UTC by pk
Modified: 2021-07-08 12:27 UTC (History)
24 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2021-07-08 12:27:26 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
Bugzilla Firefox vs chromium-freeworld (264.47 KB, image/png)
2020-05-02 11:15 UTC, pk
no flags Details
Comparison of F33 KDE Spin Firefox with and without fontconfig (272.10 KB, image/png)
2020-10-09 19:58 UTC, pk
no flags Details
Firefox font rendering 34 Beta KDE spin (62.41 KB, image/png)
2021-03-27 15:16 UTC, pk
no flags Details
Poor kerning in Fedora 34 (9.58 KB, image/png)
2021-06-18 21:14 UTC, Ian Pilcher
no flags Details

Description pk 2020-05-02 11:15:41 UTC
Created attachment 1684076 [details]
Bugzilla Firefox vs chromium-freeworld

Description of problem:
Firefox in Fedora 32 KDE spin showing poor font rendering by default, fixed with local font .conf. Not observed on Fedora 31 KDE, but may relate to more recent Firefox versions. Have seen other reddit reports of this on KDE and Gnome Workstation.

How reproducible: 
100% on F32 KDE Beta and RC6, Firefox 74 & 75. Tested on clean installs on 2 systems with 1080p displays.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Firefox.
2. Observe poor font rendering, eg: https://bugzilla.redhat.com , https://old.reddit.com/r/linux 

Actual results:
Visibly very poor font rendering in Firefox.

Expected results:
Better font rendering in Firefox, as seen in previous releases and other distros .

Additional info:
Improved with below .conf: 

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
    <match target="font">
        <edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
            <bool>true</bool>
        </edit>
        <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
            <bool>false</bool>
        </edit>
        <edit name="hinting" mode="assign">
            <bool>true</bool>
        </edit>
        <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
            <const>hintslight</const>
        </edit>
        <edit name="lcdfilter" mode="assign">
            <const>lcddefault</const>
        </edit>
        <edit name="rgba" mode="assign">
            <const>rgb</const>
        </edit>
    </match>
</fontconfig>

Comment 1 pk 2020-05-16 11:14:29 UTC
Defect still present with Firefox 76.

I can only reproduce on Fedora 32 KDE spin, F32 Workstation is OK.

If this should be against another component please let me know.

Comment 2 mphokjele 2020-07-31 22:36:43 UTC
I am using using Firefox 79 on the KDE spin and can also reproduce this issue.

Comment 3 pk 2020-10-02 21:12:44 UTC
Poor font rendering still the default in F33 KDE spin.

Missing fontconfig still needs to be manually added for normal font rendering.

Comment 4 Martin Stransky 2020-10-09 06:08:23 UTC
(In reply to pimk1n from comment #3)
> Poor font rendering still the default in F33 KDE spin.
> 
> Missing fontconfig still needs to be manually added for normal font
> rendering.

Can you please explain what's the problem here? Do we need to install any extra package or so?
Thanks.

Comment 5 pk 2020-10-09 19:58:21 UTC
Created attachment 1720344 [details]
Comparison of F33 KDE Spin Firefox with and without fontconfig

Comment 6 pk 2020-10-09 20:03:08 UTC
I have added a new screenshot from F33 KDE Spin showing issue.  

This is reproducible KDE Spin only from F33 1.3 Beta iso and installed/updated systems. 1080p only tested.

This was described to me as "It seems Firefox doesn't use font configuration provided by desktop environment. "

Issue started with Firefox around Fedora 32 KDE Beta, and still an issue with Fedora 33 KDE Beta. Not an issue in Workstation.

The creation of a fontconfig does still resolve issue and gives fonts as normally expected, the example in my first report is still what I use to resolve on F33.

Comment 7 pk 2020-10-12 20:16:34 UTC
I have tested a few other KDE distros, Fedora KDE spin is the only one that has this font issue in Firefox.

Whatever changed with Plasma 5.18, Firefox 74 or Fedora 32 onwards, at least 3 other contemporary KDE distros are not affected.

Manjaro KDE
Plasma: 5.19.5
Firefox: 81
Functional font smoothing in Firefox.

KDE Neon
Plasma: 5.19.5
Firefox: 81
Functional font smoothing in Firefox.

openSUSE Leap 15.2
Plasma: 5.20
Firefox: 78.3.0esr
Functional font smoothing in Firefox.

Comment 8 pk 2021-03-27 15:16:15 UTC
Created attachment 1766906 [details]
Firefox font rendering 34 Beta KDE spin

Issue remains with Firefox in Fedora 34 KDE Beta.

Default font rendering seen in Firefox is poor in 34 KDE spin compared to 34 Workstation or any other tested KDE option such as OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Fonts OK outside of Firefox.

Whatever changed in Firefox/KDE around 32 Beta time is still causing problem with this in F34 KDE, but not in other spins/distros.

The only common factor amongst the variety of devices tested is that they all have 1080p displays, perhaps this is not so obvious at other resolutions.

Comment 9 Jiri Dluhos 2021-04-01 20:37:06 UTC
For me, the problem exists even in default (GNOME) installation of Fedora 34; can confirm that it is much better visible on a 1080p display (naturally).

Comment 10 Jiri Dluhos 2021-04-01 20:42:10 UTC
I can also confirm that writing a .fonts.conf file in the home directory, using contents recommended in this bug description, alleviates the font rendering (Firefox still uses slightly different font size than what's set for other apps).

Comment 11 Fedora Program Management 2021-04-29 16:22:55 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 32 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 32 on 2021-05-25.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
Fedora 'version' of '32'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 32 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 12 Ben Cotton 2021-05-25 16:06:32 UTC
Fedora 32 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2021-05-25. Fedora 32 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.

Comment 13 Ian Pilcher 2021-06-18 21:13:26 UTC
This problem still exists in Fedora 34.  Seen in Plasma/X11 after upgrading from F33.

In particular, kerning is absolutely terrible.  (Will attach a screen shot in a bit.)

The ~/.fonts.conf workaround above does "de-uglify" Firefox fonts, but it also affects other applications (Thunderbird) in negative ways, so it isn't a real solution.

Comment 14 Ian Pilcher 2021-06-18 21:14:47 UTC
Created attachment 1792187 [details]
Poor kerning in Fedora 34

Comment 15 pk 2021-06-29 16:00:26 UTC
As this was closed, but not resolved, I raised another bug under fontconfig: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1965684

I have been happy with reddit provided solution to just create below symlink:
sudo ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/11-lcdfilter-default.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d

This symlink is present in other distros with KDE, such as Debian 11, which does not then show such poor default font quality in Firefox.
From my testing of modern alternatives only Fedora KDE has not corrected this regression.

How do we bring this to the attention of someone interested in KDE spin?

Comment 16 Martin Stransky 2021-06-29 21:02:31 UTC
I think this needs to be moved to fonts-filesystem.

Comment 17 Akira TAGOH 2021-07-08 12:27:26 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1965684 ***


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