[Bug 41411] Re: Fonts are mapped to ugly fonts (which also causes problems with OOo)

[James]

@Forest note on user level font.conf works around the Nimbus rendering
issues.

just run fc-cache -f -v to update the fontconfig cache afterwards and
refresh your browser page.

Oddly this problem only appears in Firefox 3&4.  Both Chrome and Opera
correctly detect that Helvetica is not installed and default to the
backup fonts (usually Arial, Verdana, Tahoma etc in the case of CSS - "
font-family : Helvetica, Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; ")

The trouble with this default aliasing to Nimbus is that for CSS authors who specify Helvetica as a first level font choice on their sites, any users with the default setup viewing the site  will get Nimbus font rendering. The replacement of Helvetica with Nimbus fools Firefox into thinking that Helvetica is installed on the system.
Comparing Helvetica on a Mac with 'Helvetica (Nimbus)' in FF/kUbuntu is no contest and there is no way that Nimbus is a valid replacement for Helvetica.

Taking out the Helvetica rule in CSS using Firebug in FF3 and 4 will
'fix' the font as it will fallback to backup fonts like Arial or Verdana
which are part of the MS font pack.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/41411

Title:
  Fonts are mapped to ugly fonts (which also causes problems with OOo)

Status in “fontconfig” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete
Status in “fontconfig” source package in Hardy:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  /etc/fonts/fonts.conf mapps the following fonts:

  Times to Nimbus Roman No9 L
  Helvetica to Nimbus Sans L
  Courier to Nimbus Mono L

  The problem with this is that the Nimbus set of fonts renders really
  badly (on my machine at least). The fonts appear with blue pixels to
  the right of about 50% of letters.

  Can these be changed to map to DejaVu or Bitstream fonts instead?
  DejaVu and Bitstream map beautifully.

  I'll attach screenshots of these current fonts in action.

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