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Why can't firefox on Mac OS 10.6.8 display indic languages such as Oriya, when font is provided via @font-face, whereas Safari et. al. can?

  • 6 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by guyvonh

guyvonh
guyvonh
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This appears to be a problem with all versions of firefox on all Mac OS 10.x machines that do not already have an Oriya font installed. Bascially, when @font-face is used (even "bullet-proof" renditions such as the one from font squirrel), the Oriya text (unicode range 0B00–0B7F) displays fine on, for example, Safari 5.1.1. and Chrome 15.0.874.121, but only appears as boxes on firefox. It seems as though Firefox on mac isn't able to utilize font-face fonts on unicode characters that lie outside of the basic latin range. Hopefully there is a fix or work around that does not involve reconfiguring firefox (as that is not a user friendly approach).

Example website: http://www.odiasahitya.com/

This appears to be a problem with all versions of firefox on all Mac OS 10.x machines that do not already have an Oriya font installed. Bascially, when @font-face is used (even "bullet-proof" renditions such as the one from font squirrel), the Oriya text (unicode range 0B00–0B7F) displays fine on, for example, Safari 5.1.1. and Chrome 15.0.874.121, but only appears as boxes on firefox. It seems as though Firefox on mac isn't able to utilize font-face fonts on unicode characters that lie outside of the basic latin range. Hopefully there is a fix or work around that does not involve reconfiguring firefox (as that is not a user friendly approach). Example website: http://www.odiasahitya.com/

All Replies (6)

guyvonh
guyvonh Question owner
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One more piece of information that may be helpful: Just so you know, @font-face does indeed work on characters within the latin range. I tested that by going to http://craigmod.com/journal/font-face/

Indeed fonts that are not installed on my mac display correctly on that webpage; so the issue appears to only be characters outside of the basic, latin range (on ff on mac).

Modified by guyvonh

cor-el
cor-el
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Is downloadable fonts enabled?

You can check the value of the gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled pref on the about:config page, via the location bar.

guyvonh
guyvonh Question owner
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Thanks for the response. Yes it is.

But, as stated, @font-face does indeed work. It just doesn't seem to work with international unicode ranges.

Modified by guyvonh

guyvonh
guyvonh Question owner
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For interested parties: I submitted this as a bug.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=706221

cor-el
cor-el
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So it is a limitation on Mac with OpenType fonts:

Jonathan Kew:

The issue here is that Firefox on OS X doesn't support fonts requiring OpenType Layout for Indic scripts, it only supports AAT fonts. This is because the Core Text framework on OS X didn't support Indic OpenType behavior, at least up through v10.6, and so the font would not render correctly. I think 10.7 may have introduced more capabilities in this area; if so, we should revise the font code in Gecko so that it accepts such fonts.

Modified by cor-el

guyvonh
guyvonh Question owner
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Johnathan provided some good information. I don't believe, however, that the issue is a Mac limitation because, as stated, Safari is able to display the font even in 10.6.7 (prior to any language support expansion introduced in Lion).

You can also view that the problem persists even when using Apple's own AAT Oriya font:

http://worldwide.familyradio.org/test/test4/