[Bug 1954716] New: Fonts not used correctly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716

            Bug ID: 1954716
           Summary: Fonts not used correctly
           Product: Fedora
           Version: rawhide
            Status: NEW
         Component: fontconfig
          Assignee: tagoh(a)redhat.com
          Reporter: barbarah.duarte(a)fluocomunicacao.com.br
        QA Contact: extras-qa(a)fedoraproject.org
                CC: ajax(a)redhat.com, caillon+fedoraproject(a)gmail.com,
                    fonts-bugs(a)lists.fedoraproject.org,
                    gnome-sig(a)lists.fedoraproject.org,
                    i18n-bugs(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, mclasen(a)redhat.com,
                    pnemade(a)redhat.com, rhughes(a)redhat.com,
                    rstrode(a)redhat.com, sandmann(a)redhat.com,
                    tagoh(a)redhat.com
  Target Milestone: ---
    Classification: Fedora



Created attachment 1776799
  --> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1776799&action=edit
LibreOffice with all three fonts displayed in regular, italic and bold face.

I have installed some company-provided fonts for use in presentations etc.:

 $ ls /usr/share/fonts/neo-sans-intel/
NeoSansIntel-Italic.ttf       NeoSansIntel-MediumItalic.ttf
NeoSansIntel-LightItalic.ttf  NeoSansIntel-Medium.ttf
NeoSansIntel-Light.ttf        NeoSansIntel.ttf

In LibreOffice I have a choice of three separate fonts: Neo Sans Intel, Neo
Sans Intel Medium, and Neo Sans Intel Light.

For each of those three, the italic version of the font (from the separate TTF
file) is used. I can tell by the tail on the 'f' character. For bold text,
however, an 'emboldening' algorithm seems to be used instead of using the
appropriate separate font file.

In GNOME font selection dialogs, I see just one 'Neo Sans Intel' family, with a
choice of 8 styles. I'll ignore the italic versions since those do actually
seem to work as expected, so there are four weights listed:
 - Light (== Neo Sans Intel Light) 
 - Regular (== Neo Sans Intel Medium)
 - Medium (== Neo Sans Intel Medium)
 - Bold (== Neo Sans Intel Medium + emboldening algorithm?)

I *don't* seem to have an option in GNOME which will just use the straight 'Neo
Sans Intel' font.

So both seem to be getting it wrong, in different ways. Or perhaps there's
something wrong with the fonts themselves?


-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug 1954716] Fonts not used correctly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716

Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
           Doc Type|---                         |If docs needed, set a value



--- Comment #1 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; ---
If you ask:


1. LibreOffice is definitely wrong because it tries to force fonts to fit in
the regular/italic/bold/bold italic model, which has not been true in font
formats for decades. It should display a single font family with the real font
face names instead of relying on legacy compatibility metadata layers (which
are increasingly unreliable because who cares the world has moved on)


2. The GNOME font selector is usually more correct, but also suffers from
attempts to make things up instead of relying on Opentype face names, making a
mess more often than not (but less often that LibreOffice). Also it does not
understand font faces split over multiple files.


3. font files are often buggy because font authors do weird things in legacy
compatibility metadata layers to fix misbehaviours in legacy windows apps that
do not understand modern font faces (breaking things for apps like Libreoffice
that take the result at face value). Again, from the font maker point of view
who cares, legacy metadata layers are for legacy apps, no modern app should try
to interpret those, the weird things are only tested in legacy windows apps.



If you want to sort this mess, run

fc-scan -f \

"%{family[0]};%{style[0]};%{fullname[0]};%{width};%{weight};%{slant};%{fontversion};%{file}\n"
\
 /usr/share/fonts/neo-sans-intel/ | sort -t ';' -k1,1d -k4,4n -k5,5n -k6,6n
-k2,2d -k7,7dr \
 | uniq | column --separator ';' -t



If the font metadata is sane you should see Neo Sans Intel in the first column,
the real font face names (Regular, Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Light, Light
Italic) in the second column, and sensible width weight and slant values in the
 4th to 6th columns



If that is not the case the font files are buggy, and you need to either get
their metadata fixed or declare overrides at the fontconfig level

(see https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/FontsPolicy)



Once the fontconfig output is sane everything else is an application (Libre
Office, Gnome Font selector, etc) bug. Usually due to someone not understanding
the OpenType font model and trying to shove font files into a simplistic
regular/bold/italic/bold italic one face per file deprecated legacy model.


-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug 1954716] Fonts not used correctly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716



--- Comment #2 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; ---
BTW Bold is not the same as Medium, there is no more reason to expect Medium to
be used when asking a Bold Regular, than expecting Regular to be used when
asking a Bold Light. Since your font family does not provide any Bold weight
using the Bold button is open to interpretations.


-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug 1954716] Fonts not used correctly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716



--- Comment #3 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; ---
Of course some font makers DO expect apps to understand Bold when they use some
other hipster designation. It works in their Apple apps (and they did not test
anything else).

What can I say, you want apps to understand Bold you state Bold in the face
name, simple easy, stupid and reliable.


-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug 1954716] Fonts not used correctly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716



--- Comment #4 from Matthias Clasen <mclasen(a)redhat.com&gt; ---
>  2. The GNOME font selector is usually more correct, but also suffers
> from attempts to make things up instead of relying on Opentype face names, making a mess
> more often than not (but less often that LibreOffice). Also it does not understand font
> faces split over multiple files. 
The gnome font selector is not in the business of understanding how font faces
are split over files. It shows the fonts that fontconfig tells us about


-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug 1954716] Fonts not used correctly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716



--- Comment #5 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; ---
Exactly, it has no business of understanding how font faces are split over
files, it should display one entry per face detected by fontconfig, and let
fontconfig handle the assembling, instead of duplicating entries for the same
face when it is split over multiple files.


-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

[Bug 1954716] Fonts not used correctly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716



--- Comment #8 from Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com&gt; ---
This message is a reminder that Fedora Linux 35 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora Linux 35 on
2022-12-13.
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
'version' of '35'.

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

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora Linux 35 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 Linux, you are encouraged to change the 'version' to a later version
prior to this bug being closed.


-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716

[Bug 1954716] Fonts not used correctly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716

Akira TAGOH <tagoh(a)redhat.com&gt; changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Resolution|---                         |UPSTREAM
             Status|NEW                         |CLOSED
            Version|35                          |rawhide
        Last Closed|                            |2022-12-08 06:48:16



--- Comment #9 from Akira TAGOH <tagoh(a)redhat.com&gt; ---
You could work around if you write some fontconfig config to modify
family/style to drop extra names and keep "Neo Sans Intel" only in family and
proper names in style. but it can't be done automatically. this is a known task
in upstream and we don't want to keep track of this here.


-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1954716