[Bug 86689] Re: firefox GUI fonts don't match system fonts

[Paolo Lacdao]

I've only just started using Feisty Fawn, and ran into this concern as
well. It took a while before I traced it down.

New versions of fonts are also included as part of the updates in a new
Ubuntu release. In Edgy, the version of ttf-dejavu included in 2.7-2. In
Feisty, 2.14-2 is included. I checked the DejaVu project page to find
out what changes were made in between those two versions, and noticed an
important change from 2.8 to 2.9. Starting in the 2.9 version, the
"condensed" and "extralight" families of the DejaVu font were now
treated as styles and not families. This means that from that version
on, there is no longer a separate file for "DejaVu Sans Condensed", but
rather, it now appears as a style under "DejaVu Sans".

Apparently, Firefox is unable to extract the font style, thus the GUI
elements in the application use "DejaVu Sans" instead. If you also
wanted your default content font to be "DejaVu Sans Condensed", you
wouldn't be able to find it under Edit > Preferences > Content > Fonts &
Colors > Advanced. Editing the settings in about:config will work to
change the default content font, but the GUI fonts will still not be
"DejaVu Sans Condensed".

I wanted a solution to this problem, and thus, what I did was to
download the 2.7-2 deb of the ttf-dejavu package from Ubuntu packages
(http://packages.ubuntu.com/edgy/x11/ttf-dejavu). I know downgrading is
generally not recommended, but I wanted a fix. I haven't noticed any
problems in using 2.7-2 thus far.

I take this as a Firefox limitation, since the changes in the DejaVu
font state why such reclassification was made. Hopefully this could be
fixed in future releases.

P.S. By the way, this font concern also applies to the 2.2 version of
OpenOffice that is part of the Feisty Fawn release.

-- 
firefox GUI fonts don't match system fonts
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/86689
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