Solved Issue affecting fonts in Thunderbird and Firefox

[Cath O'Deray]

Can anyone tell which fonts should be be used for sanserif in alerts via e-mail from FreeBSD Forums?

I can see the source (e.g. Control-U in Thunderbird), but I can't understand it.

When I know which fonts, I'll be able to begin troubleshooting for myself.

Thanks

 

[Cath O'Deray]

I can see the source (e.g. Control-U in Thunderbird), but I can't understand it.

For an e-mail not generated by XenForo (for FreeBSD Forums), the source is legible.

In the screenshot below: font-family: Helvetica, Arial;

Then, Control-F to seek Arial and Helvetica in the source of a XenForo e-mail. There's no use of Arial, so the troublesome font-family is:

Helvetica

Spoiler: zgrep pkg /var/log/messages.0.bz2

too many lines to show in a post

Spoiler: grep pkg /var/log/messages

% grep pkg /var/log/messages
Mar 14 23:52:16 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg-static[5977]: virtualbox-ose-kmod-6.1.32 deinstalled
Mar 14 23:52:22 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg-static[6154]: virtualbox-ose-kmod-6.1.32 installed
Mar 14 23:52:23 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg-static[6230]: drm-devel-kmod-5.7.19.g20220223 deinstalled
Mar 14 23:52:29 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg-static[6473]: drm-devel-kmod-5.7.19.g20220223 installed
Mar 14 23:52:30 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg-static[6517]: gpu-firmware-kmod-g20210330 deinstalled
Mar 14 23:52:52 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg-static[7883]: gpu-firmware-kmod-g20210330 installed
Mar 15 00:10:23 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: expat upgraded: 2.4.4 -> 2.4.7
Mar 15 00:10:23 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: harfbuzz upgraded: 4.0.0 -> 4.0.1
Mar 15 00:10:26 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: pango upgraded: 1.50.4 -> 1.50.5
Mar 15 00:10:26 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: mtxclient upgraded: 0.6.2 -> 0.7.0
Mar 15 00:10:27 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: xwayland-devel upgraded: 21.0.99.1.171 -> 21.0.99.1.174
Mar 15 00:10:27 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: xterm upgraded: 371 -> 372
Mar 15 00:10:39 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: virtualbox-ose upgraded: 6.1.32 -> 6.1.32_1
Mar 15 00:10:39 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: nheko upgraded: 0.9.1.1 -> 0.9.2
Mar 15 00:10:44 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: hplip upgraded: 3.20.6_1 -> 3.22.2
Mar 15 00:10:45 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: harfbuzz-icu upgraded: 4.0.0 -> 4.0.1
Mar 15 00:10:47 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: gohugo upgraded: 0.93.2 -> 0.94.0
Mar 15 00:10:47 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: freebsd-release-manifests upgraded: 20211207 -> 20220310
Mar 15 00:11:06 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[82631]: R upgraded: 4.1.2_1 -> 4.1.3
Mar 17 05:46:21 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[89739]: slop-7.6_1 installed
Mar 18 09:44:58 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: ca_root_nss upgraded: 3.75 -> 3.76
Mar 18 09:44:59 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: jpeg-turbo upgraded: 2.1.1_1 -> 2.1.3
Mar 18 09:44:59 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: gtk-update-icon-cache upgraded: 3.24.26_1 -> 3.24.31
Mar 18 09:45:02 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: librsvg2-rust upgraded: 2.52.6 -> 2.52.7
Mar 18 09:45:11 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: gtk3 upgraded: 3.24.31 -> 3.24.33
Mar 18 09:45:11 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: gpsd upgraded: 3.20_2 -> 3.23.1
Mar 18 09:45:13 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: xorg-server upgraded: 1.20.13,1 -> 1.20.14,1
Mar 18 09:45:13 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: xephyr upgraded: 1.20.13,1 -> 1.20.14,1
Mar 18 09:45:16 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: telegram-desktop upgraded: 3.5.2 -> 3.6.0
Mar 18 09:45:16 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: py38-libarchive-c upgraded: 2.9 -> 4.0
Mar 18 09:45:16 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: py38-dnspython upgraded: 2.2.0,1 -> 2.2.1,1
Mar 18 09:45:24 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: marble reinstalled: 21.12.3 -> 21.12.3
Mar 18 09:45:24 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: libraqm upgraded: 0.8.0 -> 0.9.0
Mar 18 09:45:25 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: libopenmpt upgraded: 0.6.1 -> 0.6.2
Mar 18 09:45:25 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: libjpeg-turbo upgraded: 2.1.1_1 -> 2.1.3_1
Mar 18 09:45:25 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: libarchive upgraded: 3.5.2_1,1 -> 3.6.0,1
Mar 18 09:45:26 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: gohugo upgraded: 0.94.0 -> 0.94.2
Mar 18 09:45:32 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: firefox upgraded: 98.0_2,2 -> 98.0.1,2
Mar 18 09:45:33 mowa219-gjp4-8570p-freebsd pkg[94269]: auto-admin upgraded: 0.7.9.12 -> 0.7.10
%

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Not Thunderbird alone. I just realised, I've been masking the effect in Firefox by preferring browser fonts.

When (for example) I allow site fonts for FreeBSD Forums, the problem is visible here, too:



I sped through some previous boot environments, no improvement, so maybe the issue is somewhere in my home directory.

I need to recheck at least one of the earlier environments with a full reboot (not a new beadm reroot) …

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Resolved

From past experience I expected something complicated.

As things turned out, not complicated on this occasion. It seems that this was enough to fix things:

sudo fc-cache -r -f

fc-cache(1)

---

Firefox fonts jagged and ugly

This topic really needs an up-to-date, comprehensive How-To. Font rendering in Firefox is hideous. The webfonts pkg does not change it and every suggestion I've found does not work. Chromium looks fine. Can anyone advise how to fix this and get font rendering for Firefox working as it should be?

forums.freebsd.org

This topic really needs an up-to-date, comprehensive How-To.

… Try disabling bitmap fonts if you haven't already: cd /usr/local/etc/fonts/conf.d && ln -s ../conf.avail/70-no-bitmaps.conf

Is that workaround still required on some systems? …

A few months ago (2021-10-23) I removed the symbolic link:

sudo rm /usr/local/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf

– leaving, instead a yes link:

% file /usr/local/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-yes-bitmaps.conf /usr/local/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-yes-bitmaps.conf: symbolic link to ../conf.avail/70-yes-bitmaps.conf

<https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=238482#c27> no response, I'll request closure.

This morning I removed the 70-yes-bitmaps.conf symbolic link from /usr/local/etc/fonts/conf.d, reboot -r, things remain good, touch wood.

FreeBSD Forums and e.g. <https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/pull/590> appear OK when site fonts are allowed ☑