Bug 697024 - Firefox shows a regular-weight font when bold is requested
Summary: Firefox shows a regular-weight font when bold is requested
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fonts
Classification: Unclassified
Component: free URW (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Linux
: P4 normal
Assignee: Default assignee
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2016-08-07 07:00 UTC by Simon Sapin
Modified: 2016-08-30 12:33 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Simon Sapin 2016-08-07 07:00:36 UTC
I run Arch Linux with GNOME, Evince, and Firefox. The Evince package depends on the "gsfonts" package, whose upstream URL is:

http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=urw-core35-fonts.git

Since upgrading the gsfonts package from version 20150811-1 to 20160531-3 Firefox stopped using a bold font (using a regular weight font instead) in some cases where 'font-weight: bold' is specified, for example on GitHub for user names. The Fonts panel of developer tools shows that "NimbusSans-Regular" is used for an HTML element with CSS "font-weight: bold", even though /usr/share/fonts/OTF/NimbusSans-Bold.otf exists next to /usr/share/fonts/OTF/NimbusSans-Regular.otf.

I have not noticed a similar issues in programs other than Firefox. (For example, Chromium correctly renders the same HTML element with a bold font.)

Downgrading the gsfonts package fixes the issue. The upstream repository only has one commit between these two package versions:

http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=urw-core35-fonts.git;a=commit;h=79bcdfb34fbce12b592cce389fa7a19da6b5b018

I reported this on Arch Linux’s issue tracker:

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/50278

The package maintainer responded:

> There was indeed an error spewd by the install scriptlet about some OTF font not properly declaring its weight. That's why I added "&>/dev/null" but now I cannot reproduce it.

The post-install script is:

	fc-cache -s &> /dev/null
	mkfontscale /usr/share/fonts/OTF &>/dev/null
	mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/OTF &>/dev/null

I tried running it myself again without the redirections, but got nothing at all on stdout or stderr.
Comment 1 Henry Stiles 2016-08-30 12:33:45 UTC
There are some naming issues we have reported back to URW - see 697058.  Other than that I can't see what would cause a selection problem.  I don't have access to your distribution nor is there a fresh font release for mine (ubuntu) so there isn't much I can look at.  

Even if we could reproduce it I doubt we'd investigate it unless there was a regression in ghostscript or mupdf.  If you can get a complete analysis of what is going on in Firefox and it is a font problem I can report it back to URW, or you can contact them yourself (I don't give out their email).