Ubuntu

Font rendering issue in Swiftfox, Firefox, Ephiphany, Opera, Konqueror and Songbird

Asked by Dee

* My hardware/software details:

My monitor: a Samsung syncmaster 793df CRT

My graphics card: Power Color ATI 9600 Pro

Feisty fawn version: Ubuntu 2.6.20-15-generic (32 bit version. Patched from Beta to Final)

Graphics drivers installed: xserver-xorg-video-ati

* The problem itself:
About 1 week ago, my user profile became corrupted(the issue has now been fixed). Shortly after, Swiftfox had problems rendering fonts in certain websites like the Ubuntu forums, and various other forums and sites, etc.

At first, I thought this issue was exclusive only to Mozilla-based browsers like Ephiphany and Firefox, Swiftfox, etc. However, later I tried Opera and Konqueror and got this issue as well. Also, even Songbird has this issue as well.

However, other applications like OpenOffice, K3b, Ktorrent etc., etc. are not affected.

What do I mean when I say "Swiftfox had problems rendering fonts"?

"K", "W" and various other alphabets and numericals look slightly corrupted. Before my user profile became corrupted, my fonts looked really good!

Here is a screenshot of the problem.

http://img257.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fontfirefox1ct1.png

* Temporary workaround which only works for Firefox(but causes problems for me, sometimes):
Under "Edit===>Preferences," then, "Tab: Content", and then "Fonts & Colors: Advanced", the option "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" is unchecked.

http://img442.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotfontsfirefoxnv7.png

* What I have done so far, which didn't solve the problem at all:
1) Because my user profile became corrupted, I'd to create a new user profile. This did not solve the issue itself.

2) Created a new user profile for Firefox and Swiftfox, without copying any of my bookmarks and other user data.

3) Reinstalling Swiftfox and Firefox did nothing to solve this issue.

4) Under "System" ===> "Preferences" ====> "Font", these are screenshots of my Font configurations. I tried loading different font settings like "Font rendering: Best contrast/Best shapes", "Smoothing: Grayscale/None", "Hinting: None/Medium". "Subpixel order" only caused me more problems so I put it back to default: "RGB"

Font Preferences
http://img178.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotfontpreferencgb5.png

Font Preferences: Font rendering configurations
http://img371.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotfontrenderingtg5.png

5) When I first installed Feisty Fawn, I actually loaded certain font configurations to improve subpixel font rendering from this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=343670

The following lines were added into sources.list:
deb http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu feisty fonts
deb-src http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu feisty fonts

The files I upgraded were: libfreetype6, libcairo2 and libxft2
The settings in fontconfig-config were altered with the following commands: "sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config", "sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig".
The settings I used in fontconfig-config were: "Native, Always, No bitmapped fonts"

So, I commented out the following lines in sources.list by adding ## in front of them:
## deb http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu feisty fonts
## deb-src http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu feisty fonts

Then, I typed in Terminal:
"sudo aptitude install libfreetype6=2.2.1-5ubuntu1 libcairo2=1.4.2-0ubuntu1 libxft2=2.1.12-1"

After the above files had been downgraded, I checked fontconfig to ensure font settings were back to default. Then, I restarted the pc. Still, no changes in the issue. :(

6) I've actually attempted to search for the fonts folder in Feisty LiveCD, so I could reinstall them. However, I could not locate it.

* My questions:

1) Does anyone know what else I can do to fix this issue? I really do not want to reinstall Ubuntu just because of this problem. And yet, asking for help in the Ubuntu forums didn't produce any solutions which worked.

2) Does anyone know what font ubuntuforums.org uses ? I'll try to reinstall the font myself and see if it's because the font became corrupted.

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Dee
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Revision history for this message
Best Dee (dee24) said : 		#1

Finally, with the help of LuisGMarine from the Ubuntu forums, I typed:
sudo gedit /home/USERNAME/.fonts.conf

where username = your username like katie11

and added the following code to fonts.conf

<?xml version='1.0' ?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target='font'>
<edit name='autohint' mode='assign'>
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

Although, you might want to add only just this to fonts.conf BEFORE </fontconfig>

<match target='font'>
<edit name='autohint' mode='assign'>
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>

Hope this helps anyone who's facing this problem, too.

Revision history for this message
zotrules (zotrules-rocketmail) said : 		#2

beautiful!
It worked like a charm for me.
after a week of struggle, googling and delving the net for answers and solutions; after trying solutions after solutions, reconfiguring the fonts and manipulating the .fonts.conf without any results whatsoever, i finally tried to come and drop a question in here. I searched for already asked questions, but at no avail. (fonts, fix fonts, turned nothing) while i asked my question, a little list came up and this solution was among them.
The difference between this configuration here and my .fonts.conf is still big. but i tried to change the values of "<edit name='autohint' mode='assign'>" - which in my file were "<edit mode='assign' name='hinting'>"; i just changed "hinting" to "autohint" and "<const>hintmedium(or hintfull, whichever you have)</const>" to <const>hintslight</const>. I left the rest as they were, restarted firefox, and it was fixed. I restarted thunderbird, - fixed, i restarted skype, - fixed.

i wish ubuntu team put some posting here with the default configuration of that .fonts.conf file, as, good grief, there's a helluva lot of people who are still struggling to fix this problem. Many "solutions" work for some but not for some others.
I wish ubuntu had a little program or module which could enable people to restore the original configuration and settings, as with time, learn or not, a lot of things will eventually come up that will be if not impossible, very difficult to deal with for people like me who aren't geeks in ubuntu.
Please try to consider this thing.
and also, thank you Dee for posting this solution.