Bug 112973 - Some font families getting split in English locale
Summary: Some font families getting split in English locale
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
3.6.7.2 release
Hardware: All Linux (All)
: medium minor
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: bibisected, bisected
: 113682 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 35538 Fonts-Name-Combobox Font-List 98596
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2017-10-07 11:13 UTC by Timur Davletshin
Modified: 2023-08-04 10:05 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Screenshot of LO font dialog, started in English locale (top) and Russian (bottom) (113.66 KB, image/png)
2017-10-07 11:14 UTC, Timur Davletshin
Details

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Description Timur Davletshin 2017-10-07 11:13:14 UTC
Description:
Selected fonts are getting split if English locale is used.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Check if your locale is English (LANG=en_US.UTF-8)
2. Install Vollkorn font (just as a example) (http://vollkorn-typeface.com/)
3. Start LibreOffice Writer and check new font

Actual Results:  
Font is split into 'Vollkorn', 'Vollkorn Black' and 'Vollkorn Semibold' families
5.

Expected Results:
New font is expected to be available as one 'Vollkorn' family. Works only with selected fonts (e.g. Arno Pro, Minion Pro, Warnock Pro), but since result heavily depends on locale used I consider it as LO bug.


Reproducible: Always

User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
1. Check if your locale is Russian (LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8)
2. Start LibreOffice Writer and check new font
3. New font is available as one family, no split happens.


User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
Comment 1 Timur Davletshin 2017-10-07 11:14:52 UTC
Created attachment 136826 [details]
Screenshot of LO font dialog, started in English locale (top) and Russian (bottom)
Comment 2 Buovjaga 2017-11-03 14:33:23 UTC
Reproduced by running
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 libreoffice

Arch Linux 64-bit, KDE Plasma 5
Version: 6.0.0.0.alpha1+
Build ID: 64024d7c18bd114eb9958cf80eea9129e09923bd
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 4.13; UI render: default; VCL: kde4; 
Locale: fi-FI (fi_FI.UTF-8); Calc: group
Built on November 3rd 2017

Arch Linux 64-bit
Version 3.6.7.2 (Build ID: e183d5b)
Comment 3 ⁨خالد حسني⁩ 2017-11-03 14:49:01 UTC
The behaviour under the English locale is the correct one IMO, since otherwise you wouldn’t have a way to use Vollkorn Black or Warnock Pro Caption etc.
Comment 4 Timur Davletshin 2017-11-03 15:49:39 UTC
(In reply to Khaled Hosny from comment #3)
> The behaviour under the English locale is the correct one IMO, since
> otherwise you wouldn’t have a way to use Vollkorn Black or Warnock Pro
> Caption etc.

I believe it is not. They belong to one family, additional properties are available in Format -> Character -> Style.
Comment 5 ⁨خالد حسني⁩ 2017-11-04 12:05:48 UTC
(In reply to Timur I. Davletshin from comment #4)
> (In reply to Khaled Hosny from comment #3)
> > The behaviour under the English locale is the correct one IMO, since
> > otherwise you wouldn’t have a way to use Vollkorn Black or Warnock Pro
> > Caption etc.
> 
> I believe it is not. They belong to one family, additional properties are
> available in Format -> Character -> Style.

But you can’t select them from the main UI since only buttons for R/I/B/BI are provided. The way other office suite(s) work is by grouping only the four basic styles and anything else is considered a separate family.
Comment 6 Timur Davletshin 2017-11-04 12:17:27 UTC
(In reply to Khaled Hosny from comment #5)
> (In reply to Timur I. Davletshin from comment #4)
> > (In reply to Khaled Hosny from comment #3)
> > > The behaviour under the English locale is the correct one IMO, since
> > > otherwise you wouldn’t have a way to use Vollkorn Black or Warnock Pro
> > > Caption etc.
> > 
> > I believe it is not. They belong to one family, additional properties are
> > available in Format -> Character -> Style.
> 
> But you can’t select them from the main UI since only buttons for R/I/B/BI
> are provided. The way other office suite(s) work is by grouping only the
> four basic styles and anything else is considered a separate family.

I have little chance to use other office suites last decade, so cannot comment which way is de facto standard these days. But without any doubt compatibility  should not depend on locale used on client's PC. E.g. I received document created in Russian locale and fonts are mess on my English locale PC. IMHO opinion, relying on font family specified in font file is the best approach. Some foundries make fonts available as stylistic variants, others prefer to define separate family name.
Comment 7 Buovjaga 2017-11-13 18:10:30 UTC
*** Bug 113682 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 8 Timur Davletshin 2018-02-01 16:02:42 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 9 QA Administrators 2019-02-02 03:44:32 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 10 Mihkel Tõnnov 2020-01-07 14:12:20 UTC
Still repro with 6.3.4 and also current master, running on Arch Linux.

With LANG=et_EE or en_GB (regardless of the actual UI language in LibO), the various weights of fonts like Fira Sans are grouped into one family (and, in case there are many weights, some of them are rendered inaccessible); with en_US, the weights are listed as separate families (which makes the font list very, very long if one has many multi-weight fonts installed).

In any case, current dependency on system locale breaks document interoperability.
Comment 11 Mihkel Tõnnov 2020-01-07 14:21:24 UTC
I'll try my luck bibisecting this later today/tomorrow.
Comment 12 Mihkel Tõnnov 2020-01-08 22:37:20 UTC
Bibisected first using the sparse Releases repository, which said 4.3.3.1 was the fist bad "commit". So tried with 44max repository, where:
 35dc99d53b0a61823b3731e866dd9da0ab3b9141 is the first bad commit
    commit 9436ae99438ccc24a86aff61aaa9174a9686814f
    Author:     Caolán McNamara <caolanm@redhat.com>
    AuthorDate: Fri Sep 12 10:20:48 2014 +0100
    Commit:     Caolán McNamara <caolanm@redhat.com>
    CommitDate: Fri Sep 12 10:28:21 2014 +0100
    
        Related: fdo#82259 implement mac ttf fontname encoding support
    
        which is why these font's are not appearing under Linux

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=9436ae99438ccc24a86aff61aaa9174a9686814f
... which looks like a credible cause indeed (and was backported to 4.3.3 - https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.3/RC1).

Adding Caolán to CC.

However I notice that the above results contradict the "Version 3.6.7.2" information currently in the ticket, so I tested that version specifically using both the Releases bibisect repo and old appimages - and I don't see this behaviour there:
3.6.7.2 is fine (no difference between en_US and others).
4.3.0.4 appimage is fine as well, but
4.3.7.2 appimage is broken (different font listing between en_US and others).
This matches with the bibisect result, too.

One thing to note is that I had to run the bibisect using SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen because otherwise LibO wouldn't start. I don't know if different VCL plugin could affect this?
Comment 13 QA Administrators 2022-01-08 03:50:37 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 14 ⁨خالد حسني⁩ 2023-08-03 16:23:45 UTC
We only support R/B/I/BI font family model for various legacy and compatibility reasons, and that is why families with styles other than these four get handles as separate font families. This is intentional and not a bug.

I don’t get the difference between English and Russian locales as well, the font is split the same either way.
Comment 15 Eyal Rozenberg 2023-08-03 18:36:03 UTC
(In reply to ⁨خالد حسني⁩ from comment #14)
> We only support R/B/I/BI font family model

Which is a bug.


> for various legacy and compatibility reasons

Legacy, in the sense that this is how it was implemented before? That's not much of an argument.

As for compatibility - the 2x2 dichotomy would simply be translated into a more expressive font selection information. That's part of the required work.

> and that is why families with styles other than these
> four get handles as separate font families. This is intentional and not a bug.

It's a bug, even if done intentionally. Done intentionally" just means someone made the wrong call. It is unreasonable for an office suite to just decide it won't properly support things like a style for making one's font oblique, or increasing the weight to a certain fraction of the maximum etc., because of an ugly "jerry-rigging" of variants into a separate font family.
Comment 16 ⁨خالد حسني⁩ 2023-08-03 19:20:19 UTC
Please do not re-open bugs randomly. This bug is about dependency between locales which is already fixed.
Comment 17 ⁨خالد حسني⁩ 2023-08-03 19:25:14 UTC
(In reply to ⁨خالد حسني⁩ from comment #16)
> Please do not re-open bugs randomly. This bug is about dependency between
> locales which is already fixed.

s/dependency/discrepancy/
Comment 18 Eyal Rozenberg 2023-08-04 10:05:47 UTC
(In reply to ⁨خالد حسني⁩ from comment #16)
> Please do not re-open bugs randomly. This bug is about dependency between
> locales which is already fixed.

Ok, sorry, I thought you were closing it because of also closing 35538. Will leave this one closed.