Font Enworsening
I hate the Firefox's copyrighted proprietary stupid feature bug, which is officially called "Font Enworsening". It involves ruining the beauty of fonts, with modifying.
Many font modifications are made by Firefox, and in some fonts such as Custom Font, they are even illegal. These include: 1. changing the font height, causing incorrect font ratio and gaps in selection 2. changing the space width, ruining the monospace beauty 3. rendering characters high or low in small size when HTML superscript or subscript is used 4. inconsistent character squishing in PDF files, ruining the monospace beauty and thickness 5. modifying the font spacing, causing incorrect font ratio 6. in case of bitmap fonts (supported on XP but not 10) the text is shifted pixel left, which may be cut off and is not synced with selection and current character guide line
What Firefox should do? (the numbers correspond to the numbers above) 1. preserve font height 2. preserve character width 3. allow customization of this and/or use the Unicode superscript/subscript font characters depending on character availability 4. preserve character width and stretch 5. preserve character width 6. preserve character phase 7. allow bitmap fonts in all Windows versions, just like Notepad does so with no problem 8. to compensate for fonts which have characters mapped to wrong characters due to 256 character limit on .fon fonts, allow a character replacement table (including superscripts/subscripts) 9. allow formatting replacement table (for example red text color instead of bold, etc.) 10. allow a size replacement table, in case a font looks ugly on some/most sizes 11. allow color customization more than ever (like grayed out text being red instead of darkened) 12. fix the bug where text and background color override doesn't work properly on high contrast, instead using your favorite color scheme regardless of settings 13. allow a "Red Detection" feature, which detects a red text color (not link color) set in webpage and allows you to choose a custom color for it 14. allow a "Magnifying Glass" feature, which allows you to see a small area without color or font overrides (with a hotkey)
All Replies (19)
Firefox Volunteer Support can not help you. Nor will it likely be seen by someone that would act or maybe 2yrs later. This is not the place for that, this is to fix issues if Firefox is broken and people need help fixing it. That is not broken, it is something you do not like.
To submit suggestions for new or changed features, may I suggest Feedback:
Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
This is broken, because in font selection, Firefox claims it's Arial, Consolas, etc. but it sometimes doesn't use these fonts, it uses modified versions of these fonts, which is really bad and a lie!
You're wrong. The font names Firefox displays are a lie, because of these modifications. This site did not show an option to disable these s*up*d modifications. Imagine a font called Bxuepsmt which is bitmap, monospaced, has a ratio of 1:2, has a character A that is symmetrical vertically, has a ² character and rules of it state that modifying is illegal. Modifying it will make it no longer Bxuepsmt, just like with any other font. Let's go over all the modifications Firefox makes:
Changing the font height - the font ratio is no longer 1:2, so this isn't Bxuepsmt anymore. To zoom in this issue, go here.
Changing the space width - nope, justification is not something one should listen to when it comes to browsers. The font is no longer monospaced, and the ratio of the space character is no longer 1:2 (it even changes with each line). Therefore, this font is not Bxuepsmt.
Fake superscripts/subscripts - doing this to 2 will imply modifying the ² character, making it no longer the Bxuepsmt font. Extending the font may also be considered modifying, so the safest solution is to display unavailable superscripts or subscripts as the character that is shown when the character is not in the font.
Horrible PDF font rendering - not only this modifies the color scheme, but this modifies the ratio of each character to be no longer 1:2. The resulting font is not Bxuepsmt. To zoom in this issue, go here.
Modifying the font spacing - this implies changing the ratio of each character to be no longer 1:2, so the font isn't Bxuepsmt.
Shifting the font 1 pixel left - this makes the A character no longer symmetrical, therefore the font cannot be called Bxuepsmt.
Worse, all these are illegal because the font rules stated that modifying it is illegal.
You persist in telling people that have no power to do anything about what you claim. Firefox Volunteer Support can do nothing about what you want please use the URL I previously posted to you and copy and paste all this into that.
Please Mark this as Solved so others can find the link also. Thank You and have a Good Holiday
Test page for superscripts and subscripts: http://superscriptsubscripttest.bitballoon.com/
Could you please file a bug on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi about this superscript/subscript issue and provide here on SUMO the bug number to let us follow it? Thanks.
Firefox 52 ESR is nearly at its end of life and not getting any functional updates. You should retest in Firefox 59 (or 60 Beta, or 61 Nightly) and update your bug with the issues affecting those versions.
The attachment to the bug looks similar in the 3 browsers I tried: Firefox 59, Chrome, and IE 11 (screenshot attached). Is everyone doing it wrong, or does your Firefox display it differently?
That's how it is displayed for me. However, the current handling is messed up; superscripts and subscripts should never be done by shrinking the base characters, instead the appropriate Unicode characters should be used. If no Unicode character for the superscript or subscript is present, FFFD. Every browser and office makes this awful mistake. If I ever were to create my own browser, this would be its behavior. If I ever were to create my own font format, I would add a superscript and subscript allocation table so that the superscripts and subscripts not in Unicode may be mapped to private use characters.
And the test page's non-attachment equivalent, superscriptsubscripttest.bitballoon.com, adds emojis to the mix. Please note, that font modifications, like shrinking a character and raising or lowering it, are exactly the Font Enworsening I'm talking about.
Here's a "photoshopped" image of what output is as my dream:
https://i.imgur.com/OyJtE7A.png
The emojis are not existent in Custom Font, so they are rendered as boxes, which is the replacement character. And even if they existed, they would render in black and white (or yellow and black with this color scheme).
The superscripts and subscripts are not what Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft FrontPage, WordPad, Word or OpenOffice would output. Note that the shape of superscript 2 and superscript superscript 2 is squished, which is the case in Custom Font. Custom Font in the custom font format would have an allocation table mapping superscripts, subscripts and superscripts/subscripts of superscripts/subscripts to Unicode characters. The test string would map to 0032 00B2 E034 1D43 E01E 2090 E139. Note that E000 to F8FF is private use. In case of fonts that don't have an allocation table, Firefox should have its own allocation table that maps superscripts and subscripts that exist in Unicode as their Unicode code points, and all others map to FFFD.
PiotrGrochowski said
And the test page's non-attachment equivalent, superscriptsubscripttest.bitballoon.com, adds emojis to the mix. Please note, that font modifications, like shrinking a character and raising or lowering it, are exactly the Font Enworsening I'm talking about.
Note that Malwarebytes finds this URL as Malicious Virustotal marks as Phishing site by 1 : https://www.virustotal.com/#/url/125c2f7fc46e76f40a7b6562ca32ec9fde51bf438b802b4680bbaa6338c3ff9e/detection
Modified by Shadow110
Probably a false positive. Maybe caused by FFFD.
And I have no HTML, CSS or PDF skills to demonstrate all other types of Font Enworsening...
You can right-click and select "Inspect Element" to open the builtin Inspector with this element selected.
You can check the font used for selected text in the Font tab in the right pane of the Inspector.
Note that this is not about the font-family CSS rule, but about the font that Firefox actually uses as shown in the Font tab.
Your comment is pointless.