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Another Fun(tm) rendering bug: In Firefox, when a word is split across lines between two characters normally connected by a ligature, the ligature doesn't get d

Another Fun(tm) rendering bug: In Firefox, when a word is split across lines between two characters normally connected by a ligature, the ligature doesn't get disabled and the two characters rendered separately, but the ligature is sliced in half and rendered across lines: - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479829 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479829 - https://bug479829.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=363733 https://bug479829.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=36373...

chrismorgan 5y ago
The fun thing here is that as soon as I read Firefox, I knew it was going to be the split ligature issue. There are so few text rendering issues in Firefox, and that’s probably the only one most people will ever encounter.
- andjd 5y ago
  My reaction to this was how would this ever be a common issue? When would you naturally have a line break in the middle of a ligature. The screenshots show the answer: auto hyphenation. But at the point you're dropping a hyphen between the elements of a ligature, how do you not break up the ligature into two independent glyphs?
  - zerocrates 5y ago
    I assume the basic issue is that by the time they've decided how big the text is (and therefore if/where they need hyphenation), they've already decided to use the ligature. Dynamically deciding whether or not to use the ligature when its at the linebreak seems expensive... refusing to do a ligature in the presence of a soft hyphen and otherwise treating the ligature as a single unit that cannot be broken seems like the more tractable way out of the problem... but I'm sure I'm avoiding or unaware of some additional piece of complexity.
moffkalast 5y ago
There is something profoundly weird with text rendering in Firefox. Having used Chrome for years and then switched for a while I tried all the different antialiasing modes in the config but neither of them look the same as Chrome somehow, it's all just a tiny bit off and it's so unnerving. Also if you have an input box in html with a size value set to the number of chars you need, that value will be always too short in Firefox, so you have to set it to some multiple which then renders too long in all other browsers where it resolves correctly. I think it's been logged on bugzilla and closed as wontfix, as usual. Typical firefox development cycle.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  > There is something profoundly weird with text rendering in Firefox. Font rendering differs between OSes. Are you on Windows? That's the OS with the most Firefox font rendering options. On Windows Firefox, I generally clear the list of fonts rendered in GDI rendering mode. IIRC you can set font rendering mode 0 and disable enhanced contrast to match Chrome closer. > Also if you have an input box in html with a size value set to the number of chars you need, that value will be always too short in Firefox Ouch if true.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    Ah yes, I never really bother to install Chrome on any of my linux machines, but my main one is still Windows and that's where I noticed it. Why should something like font rendering differ between OSes, that makes no sense. A browser should render the exact same image on all platforms. But then again I forget we don't live in a world where anything makes sense. > Ouch if true. Yeah see here: https://i.imgur.com/p6sALTq.png https://i.imgur.com/p6sALTq.png Input field, size specified as 6. Now that I'm looking at it again I suppose it's clear that Firefox ignores the arrow box width while making it visible all the time...? Not entirely font related but it's still rather atrocious.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago

chrismorgan 5y ago

The fun thing here is that as soon as I read Firefox, I knew it was going to be the split ligature issue. There are so few text rendering issues in Firefox, and that’s probably the only one most people will ever encounter.

andjd 5y ago
My reaction to this was how would this ever be a common issue? When would you naturally have a line break in the middle of a ligature. The screenshots show the answer: auto hyphenation. But at the point you're dropping a hyphen between the elements of a ligature, how do you not break up the ligature into two independent glyphs?
- zerocrates 5y ago
  I assume the basic issue is that by the time they've decided how big the text is (and therefore if/where they need hyphenation), they've already decided to use the ligature. Dynamically deciding whether or not to use the ligature when its at the linebreak seems expensive... refusing to do a ligature in the presence of a soft hyphen and otherwise treating the ligature as a single unit that cannot be broken seems like the more tractable way out of the problem... but I'm sure I'm avoiding or unaware of some additional piece of complexity.

moffkalast 5y ago

There is something profoundly weird with text rendering in Firefox. Having used Chrome for years and then switched for a while I tried all the different antialiasing modes in the config but neither of them look the same as Chrome somehow, it's all just a tiny bit off and it's so unnerving. Also if you have an input box in html with a size value set to the number of chars you need, that value will be always too short in Firefox, so you have to set it to some multiple which then renders too long in all other browsers where it resolves correctly. I think it's been logged on bugzilla and closed as wontfix, as usual. Typical firefox development cycle.

nyanpasu64 5y ago
> There is something profoundly weird with text rendering in Firefox. Font rendering differs between OSes. Are you on Windows? That's the OS with the most Firefox font rendering options. On Windows Firefox, I generally clear the list of fonts rendered in GDI rendering mode. IIRC you can set font rendering mode 0 and disable enhanced contrast to match Chrome closer. > Also if you have an input box in html with a size value set to the number of chars you need, that value will be always too short in Firefox Ouch if true.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  Ah yes, I never really bother to install Chrome on any of my linux machines, but my main one is still Windows and that's where I noticed it. Why should something like font rendering differ between OSes, that makes no sense. A browser should render the exact same image on all platforms. But then again I forget we don't live in a world where anything makes sense. > Ouch if true. Yeah see here: https://i.imgur.com/p6sALTq.png https://i.imgur.com/p6sALTq.png Input field, size specified as 6. Now that I'm looking at it again I suppose it's clear that Firefox ignores the arrow box width while making it visible all the time...? Not entirely font related but it's still rather atrocious.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago