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Firefox Linux: Available Monospace Font ignored and falls back to the 3rd font on font-family font stack

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On GitHub page, the code block is styled with

> font-family: SFMono-Regular,Consolas,Liberation Mono,Menlo,Courier,monospace;

I have SFMono installed on the system, however, Liberation Mono is used instead.

If I update the CSS value to

> font-family: SF Mono;

Or

> font-family: SF Mono,Consolas,Liberation Mono,Menlo,Courier,monospace;

It would work properly.

What is wrong with my setup?

Below are 2 command outputs:

$ fc-match -s 'SFMono-Regular,Consolas,Liberation Mono,Menlo,Courier,monospace' | head -2

SFMono-Regular.otf: "SF Mono" "Regular"

DroidSans.ttf: "Droid Sans" "Regular"

$ fc-match -s 'SFMono-Regular' | head -2

SFMono-Regular.otf: "SF Mono" "Regular"

DroidSans.ttf: "Droid Sans" "Regular"

On GitHub page, the code block is styled with > font-family: SFMono-Regular,Consolas,Liberation Mono,Menlo,Courier,monospace; I have SFMono installed on the system, however, Liberation Mono is used instead. If I update the CSS value to > font-family: SF Mono; Or > font-family: SF Mono,Consolas,Liberation Mono,Menlo,Courier,monospace; It would work properly. What is wrong with my setup? Below are 2 command outputs: $ fc-match -s 'SFMono-Regular,Consolas,Liberation Mono,Menlo,Courier,monospace' | head -2 SFMono-Regular.otf: "SF Mono" "Regular" DroidSans.ttf: "Droid Sans" "Regular" $ fc-match -s 'SFMono-Regular' | head -2 SFMono-Regular.otf: "SF Mono" "Regular" DroidSans.ttf: "Droid Sans" "Regular"
Attached screenshots

Modified by mz_experience

Chosen solution

I think this doesn't work for the same reason "Arial Bold" doesn't work: Firefox only wants the font family name and not a specific face name or file name.

Perhaps Github accidentally used the font's file name instead of the font name, or they meant to create an @font rule defining what "SFMono-Regular" refers to, but that got lost in the shuffle somewhere. Your guess is as good as mine.

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All Replies (4)

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Do other browsers understand this font name? If so, maybe they are considering the font's file name or stopping at the hyphen.

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jscher2000 said

Do other browsers understand this font name? If so, maybe they are considering the font's file name or stopping at the hyphen.

It seems not, I have tried Chromium, same behavior. However, I believe Firefox should use fontconfig, and the command output shows the font is properly installed and should match. Picture 2 and 3 shows it working. Why "SFMono-Regular" would cause issue?

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Chosen Solution

I think this doesn't work for the same reason "Arial Bold" doesn't work: Firefox only wants the font family name and not a specific face name or file name.

Perhaps Github accidentally used the font's file name instead of the font name, or they meant to create an @font rule defining what "SFMono-Regular" refers to, but that got lost in the shuffle somewhere. Your guess is as good as mine.

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I think you are properly right, I ended up created an alias for "SFMono-Regular" in fontconfig, then it started to work.

 <alias>
   <family>SFMono-Regular</family>
   <prefer><family>SF Mono</family>
   </prefer>
 </alias>