bugFree UCS Outline Fonts - Bugs: bug #44200, Some small captital features...

 
 

bug #44200: Some small captital features missing

Submitter:  Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Submitted:  Sat 07 Feb 2015 05:24:58 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  overall font problem Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  character substitution issue Status:  Fix posted
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  Stevan_White
Open/Closed:  Open Release:  * 2012-05-03
* Mandatory Fields

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Fri 02 Oct 2015 08:10:06 AM UTC, comment #32: 

Hi Steve,

I think small capital little Yus and its iotation form should behaviored similar to their capital forms. Here is my proposal:


Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Tue 15 Sep 2015 08:52:59 AM UTC, comment #31: 

Hi Steve,

I can see small caps i̍, but I must marked as Azerbaijani, Turkish and Crimtartar instead of Minnan or other Chinese dialect.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Thu 16 Apr 2015 06:33:35 AM UTC, comment #30: 

This small i with a vertical line above is problematic as a small caps variant.  It would imply a small caps variant for dotless i, and that would cause a cascade of questions -- there are languages in which small i and dotless i are both used and must be distinct.

I gravely doubt the typographic wisdom of applying small caps to such heavily accented text as

"Wikipedia sī ceo̍-iú ē bā-keo-cé̤ⁿ-sṳ, sâi Hing-hua̍ báⁿ-uā-ci̍ gah Hâng-ci̍ cá̤ siâ, ga̍u ging-dua̍ⁿ i̍-ging ū 238 peng meóng-da̤uⁿ."

Basically this is asking for trouble.  And for what, exactly?

If you think it's important, please open a separate report about this.  I will postpone it, but maybe other people will have ideas.

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Thu 16 Apr 2015 01:33:39 AM UTC, comment #29: 

Well, I just opened the Main Page of Puxian Min Wikipedia test wiki, found i with vertical line have no small capical variant in FreeSerif.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Wed 15 Apr 2015 08:36:52 PM UTC, comment #28: 

Hi Hsing-yen,

I don't know what you are referring to.  Lower-case letter i does indeed have a small caps variant.

Please explain what you see, what you think you should see, and provide images and original documents, if that helps.

Thanks!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Wed 15 Apr 2015 09:23:54 AM UTC, comment #27: 

Hi,
I feel it is so odd that i̍ looks have no small capital variant.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Mon 16 Feb 2015 07:45:32 PM UTC, comment #26: 

I just uploaded a new snapshot.
Fixes are in FreeSerif normal only.

  • "Nj", "Lj",


these are already fixed in SVN

  • "Komi De", "Komi Dje", "Cyrillic Rha", "Cyrillic Yae",


From a living language.  I made small caps forms.

  • "Neutral Yar"(U+A64E, U+A64F),


Not in use in a living language

  • "Superscript n"(U+207F) should have small captital style;


I disagree.
Capital and small letters are conceptually different forms of the same letter. Small caps is a typographic effect style used in text for emphasis or effect.  It works only because the meaning of the letters is the same in caps or small caps form.
Super/Subscript are not text, and small caps will not be implemented for super/subscript characters. The super/subscripts are intended as symbols whose meaning may change by changing case. If someone needs a superscript small caps N, there are other ways of attaining that.

  • Ẩ, Ẳ, Ể, Ổ looks not well.


Put
<span lang="vi">
</span>
around these letters in the HTML.

Thanks again!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Mon 16 Feb 2015 10:52:54 AM UTC, comment #25: 

Hi Steve,

I was really resolved the font file problem. In my opinion, "Nj" "Lj" are Latin Extended-B letters, "Superscript n" is really have small capical style (as Tâi-oân-hú-siâⁿ Kàu-hōe-pò shown), Cyrillic Capital U looks obviously different from 3 May 2012 release.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Mon 16 Feb 2015 08:03:55 AM UTC, comment #24: 

Hi,

It looks like you resolved the installation problem!!!

However your picture still differs from mine.  I will investigate.

As to the (rare) letters you mentioned, as always, the priority of fixing them depends on how many people use them.  Living languages first.

Thanks!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Mon 16 Feb 2015 08:02:29 AM UTC, comment #23: 

Additionally, Cyrillic U looks not good-looking than 3 May 2012 release.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Mon 16 Feb 2015 03:44:56 AM UTC, comment #22: 

Oh~well, I have re-tested small captital feature and Gothic letter with 8 Feb. 2015 release, it looks the same as you demonstrated.

The problem I think is:
"Nj", "Lj", "Komi De", "Komi Dje", "Cyrillic Rha", "Cyrillic Yae", "Neutral Yar"(U+A64E, U+A64F), "Superscript n"(U+207F) should have small captital style;
Ẩ, Ẳ, Ể, Ổ looks not well.

(file #33097)

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sun 15 Feb 2015 02:29:48 PM UTC, comment #21: 

Hi Hsing-yen,

I somehow overlooked the file
   * Command Prompt outputs.png
in your attachment file #33078.

This part is now clear: you have the familar problem of deleted fonts not really going away in Windows.

You see in that image multiple copies of the same font files:
   * FreeSans_0.ttf
   * FreeSans_1.ttf
and so on.  I have found in the past that Windows gets very confused in such a situation.

I have often had to fix this in Windows 7.  Never tried it in Windows 8.

The solution is to re-boot the system in protected mode, open a commad shell, go to the C:\Windows\Fonts\ directory, and

  • del Free*otf
  • del Free*ttf


Now reboot, and install the snapshot version (the one from the Google Drive link I sent you by e-mail), and re-test.

I bet this will fix the problem in Windows.

It's funny... this doesn't happen every time, as near as I can tell.  But once it happens, it's stuck until you delete the files by hand.

Don't know about the Android system yet.

Cheers!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sun 15 Feb 2015 01:06:07 PM UTC, comment #20: 

Hi Hsing-yen,

Since we are unclear about what you have done, let me explain what I expected you to do.

1) Open the Windows Fonts Control Panel, remove all existing FreeFont faces.

2) Get the latest build from the Google Drive link I sent you.  The latest is named
    freefont-ttf-20150208.zip
Please do not get any build from any other site.

3) Unpack that file, select and copy the ".ttf" files that are inside it.

4) Past these in the Windows Fonts Control Panel.

Now do your tests.

Cheers!

(Python should have nothing to do with this.  Neither should GitHub.)

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sun 15 Feb 2015 08:21:25 AM UTC, comment #19: 

Hsing-yen,

1) The image you sent in the file "Test Gothic.zip" is from an older release of FreeFont, and not the latest snapshot.  The letter shapes in recent versions are quite different from these.
(See attached ;Gothic-latest-build'--note especially the little "feet" on the letters, for instance the letter that looks like Greek 'pi'.)

So it appears that you have not really installed the snapshot version of FreeFont.

2) Please report the results of the second test I suggested yesterday:

  • with the snapshot of the fonts that I sent you installed

Open up a 'cmd' shell (or under Accessories->Windows PowerShell). In it, type

  • cd C:\Windows\Fonts

then

  • dir free*

Let me know what it prints.  This may be important.

3) The last stable release of FreeFont for Windows is at

in a file named

  • freefont-ttf-20120503.zip


4) I know nothing of a version at GitHub.  If there is a problem with their builds, do not report that here -- report it to them.

5) I also have no idea what you're talking about: "the program always show alarms"... what program?   What exactly did you do?  Without the details there is little chance that we can help.

6) Concerning Python:  Please explain what you are doing!  We have no idea what you are talking about.  What exactly do you do with what files with what program? 
This is very strange to us -- as we said, FreeFont can't directly be built on Windows, yet you say you are just running Windows.

  ------

I have some further ideas.  But first answer the above questions.
Really it's very unclear to me just what you are doing.

Thanks!


Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sun 15 Feb 2015 05:48:26 AM UTC, comment #18: 

Because of that failure, I was back to the latest stable version of FreeFonts.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sun 15 Feb 2015 03:56:32 AM UTC, comment #17: 

Hi Steve,

I have tested Gothic characters, they are no problem for me.

I have tried to download the latest source code to output font file to test, and I have download the latest stable version of FontForge for Windows from their repository at GitHub. But the program always show alarms about glyph missing when I output font file, then I found some glyphs were really disappeared, so I download the source code again and found Python traceback error break the source code.

(file #33078)

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sat 14 Feb 2015 08:07:17 AM UTC, comment #16: 

Hi Hsing-yen,

Thanks for doing those tests!

1) Could you please also make a snapshot of the results of opening the Gothic.html file in a browser?

2) There is just one thing more I can think of at this time for you to look at.  Open up a 'cmd' shell (or under Accessories->Windows PowerShell).  In it, type
   cd C:\Windows\Fonts
then
   dir free*
Let me know what it prints.

 -------------

Regarding the Python traceback thing...

I have no idea what this is.  I can't imagine what your images are showing ... I see the 'sfd' files there, but why are they in web browsers?

You know, FreeFont requires the program FontForge to build the font.  The 'sfd' files are input for that program.
And FontForge only runs on Linux, I think.  (Maybe other unix-ish systems too, but not Windows.)

(This is why I assumed you were using Linux: you said you were trying to build the font, when it can only be built on Linux.)

Cheers!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sat 14 Feb 2015 05:39:51 AM UTC, comment #15: 

I am tried the small-caps test file with Internet Explorer, It looks the same as what Firefox and Chrome presented.

(file #33071)

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sat 14 Feb 2015 05:22:12 AM UTC, comment #14: 

 tried the small-caps test file with Internet Explorer?

(file #33070)

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Fri 13 Feb 2015 08:05:21 PM UTC, comment #13: 

Yes, it was easy to fix the test in Chrome.  Just needed "-webkit-" in front of the "font-features-settings".  On a hunch, I added "-moz-" too, for older versions of Firefox.

See attached.  Works for me, give it a shot!

(file #33068)

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Fri 13 Feb 2015 07:49:55 PM UTC, comment #12: 

Hi Hsing-yen,

Attached is a test of the Gothic range, whose glyphs were recently changed in FreeSerif. 
** Please send us a screen shot of the results on your system.

I just tested the snapshot fonts under Windows 7 (latest updates). In MS Internet Explorer and Firefox (latest update), 'smcp' and 'c2sc' seem to display the test page perfectly.  See attachment.
Chrome browser is ignoring the settings.  But maybe I can fix that.

It is possible to disable certain font features in Firefox. 

** Could you please try the small-caps test file with Internet Explorer?

It is possible in Windows 7 for deleted fonts to somehow get "stuck", not really deleted from the system, and it is my recollection that this can have strange effects.

I don't have a Windows 8 system at my disposal.

As to Android, my one modern device doesn't permit arbitrary installation of fonts (I hope to do something about that, but it isn't easy).  My other device is quite old.  I'll give it a shot.

Of course it is possible that something has changed in Windows 8 and Android.  I'll try to test this.

Frankly, so many things can go wrong with the installation and use of fonts, I still suspect it is something else though.

file #33066)

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Fri 13 Feb 2015 04:47:24 PM UTC, comment #11: 

Hi Steve,

I have no Linux device and I do not know anything about Linux, I am using Windows 8+ only.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Thu 12 Feb 2015 06:08:30 PM UTC, comment #10: 

Hi Hsing-yen,

What operating system are you using on your desktop?  I assume it's Linux. 

Font installation is complicated in Linux -- FreeFont especially, unfortunately.

In a terminal, type
     fc-list | grep Free
Make sure the paths are the ones of the new fonts.
If they are not, you are unlikely to get good results.

If you have a Linux distribution, it is difficult to remove the freefont distribution package.  I recommend to find the '.ttf' files and delete them.  They may be in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/

Then as root user, run
    fc-config -f
Then as your normal user, run
    fc-config -f
Now check again with
    fc-list | grep Free

Re-start your applications.

The Python error you see when building the fonts from code is probably due to a missing package on your system, maybe "python-fontforge".

But first, let's see if you can install the snapshot files.

Cheers!


Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Thu 12 Feb 2015 05:30:46 PM UTC, comment #9: 

Hi,

I have tried to test the newer fonts for so much times, but I always failed, later I found "Python Traceback" error notice at the source code after I download it, then I found this error is also occured when I view the source code from your subversion repository.

I Promise I have loaded an HTML from a file on my devices before I send to you, and I do not know which site is using FreeFont as web font.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sun 08 Feb 2015 06:35:30 PM UTC, comment #8: 

Hi,

As I explained, FreeFont 2012-05-03 has very little support for font features 'smcp' and 'c2sc'.  We already know that; it is no surprise, and we have no time machine with which to change the past.

Please test the newer fonts in the snapshot I sent you.
Those are dated today, not 2012.  These have much more support for those font features.

You still have not explained what you do to see these images.

Are you loading an HTML from a file on the device, or are you loading them from a Web site?

Are the fonts installed on your desktop/mobile, or are they Web fonts, being delivered from CSS in the web page?  I ask this, because I think the features 'smcp' and 'c2sc' are disabled in web fonts (for some evil reason I do not even want to consider.)

Please have patience!  We will get to the bottom of this.

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sun 08 Feb 2015 05:39:05 PM UTC, comment #7: 

Hi Steve,

I am using the latest version (2012-05-03) of FreeFonts, I also using the latest version (35.0.1) of Firefox, both my computer and mobile installed it. I take the same shot of file #33020 from different devices. I want to send a file to you to describe what I am seeing.

By the way, I think "Nj" "superscript n" should have a "smcp" style.

(file #33032)

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sun 08 Feb 2015 12:53:16 PM UTC, comment #6: 

Hi,

Then I don't understand comment #3.  Please describe your situation as completely as possible.

By "last stable release", am I to understand then the snapshot?
(Which by the way, is not a "stable release", it has not been tested -- it is just for you to look at.)

Am I to understand, you are using the Firefox browser on an Android device, with the snapshot of FreeFont installed?
If that is the case, exactly what document are you looking at?

If this is the case, you are now in the position of determining: "Am I seeing the font that I installed?"
Once you are sure you are seeing the correct version of FreeFont, then we can move on to the question of why you don't see the features.  There are many possibilites, most of which have nothing to do with the font itself.

For instance, if you are looking at that Wiki page, make sure that it hasn't altered the CSS (as I mentioned before).  And make sure it isn't delivering a font to your Android.

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sun 08 Feb 2015 12:36:42 PM UTC, comment #5: 

Yes, I got it.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sun 08 Feb 2015 09:33:52 AM UTC, comment #4: 

Hi Hsing-yen,

We are not understanding one another.

If by "latest stable release" you mean the 2012 release, I can only repeat: that version has very little support for small capitals.  As I pointed out, this is pretty knew technology, and small caps support has since been added to the development version.

I showed you in the attachment that the current development version of FreeFont has pretty good support for small caps.  And I sent you a link to a snapshot of a recent build, for you to test.  Did you get these?

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sun 08 Feb 2015 04:20:34 AM UTC, comment #3: 

I want to add that both FreeFonts and Firefox are the latest stable release, I have tested again in my Android device, the problem is still there.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sun 08 Feb 2015 03:59:28 AM UTC, comment #2: 

Hello Steve

I have tested both Core fonts for the Web and some famous free and open-source fonts before I post this bug, some of them support these features on the web, especially T*mes New Roman, Arial, Linux libertine/Biolinum, SIL fonts, EB Garamond. I remembered SIL fonts can show Latin small capitals down to Extended Additional letters, others may support down to Latin-1 Supplement or Extended-A. Both T*R and Arial can disppay small capitals for Greek and Cyrillic.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Sat 07 Feb 2015 09:22:50 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Hello Hsing-yen,

Which letters specifically are you referring to?

I pulled the HTML of your test out of the Wiki page and made a clean example.  Find attached the HTML, and the PDF output of Firefox on my system using a recent build of FreeFont.

I find, on the contrary, that the vast majority of Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic works as expected with the modern CSS font features 'smcp' and 'c2sc' are supported in current FreeFont Serif and Sans.

You say you are using the 2012 release.  It did indeed support very few of these features.

By the way, these are purely stylistic features, "nice to have" but not at all "missing characters".

We worked pretty hard on this a couple of years ago.  A decision had to be made at some point where to stop: for instance, although Cyrillic letters in modern use are supported, letter forms for Old Slavonic are not made in small caps.   It is a matter of time and effort against utility.

Note that the CSS font features properties are pretty new, and incompletely supported still in some browsers.

Also note that CSS in a Wiki is subject to well-meant but misguided "correction".  They will often force a font that you do not want or do not have, causing misunderstandings, and often, just a big mess.

Once again, please be sure which font you are looking at!

Thanks for your great test page!

(file #33020, file #33021)

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sat 07 Feb 2015 05:24:58 AM UTC, original submission:  

Hi Steve,

I found FreeSerif and FreeSans have only a few Latin and Greek letters suppprt small captital feature when I make a detection for smcp and c2sp feature.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:%E6%B2%99%E7%9B%92&oldid=34235859

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>

 

(Note: upload size limit is set to 16384 kB, after insertion of the required escape characters.)

Attach Files:
   
   
Comment:
   

Attached Files
file #35031:  Proposal_for_Yuses.png added by hammerandsickle (7KiB - image/png - This is made by Wi⃰ndows Paint, just implement via croping exsisted glyphs.)
file #33078:  Test Gothic.zip added by hammerandsickle (227KiB - application/zip)
file #33071:  IE-smallcaps-win8.1.zip added by hammerandsickle (763KiB - application/zip)
file #33070:  Python Traceback error break the source code.zip added by hammerandsickle (912KiB - application/zip - Maybe it is causeed by server client's bug.)
file #33066:  Gothic.html added by Stevan_White (2KiB - text/html)
file #33032:  Shot from small-caps-test.html .7z added by hammerandsickle (501KiB - application/octet-stream - In this archive file I take shot directly from Firefox for Mobile at first, then I take shot from Print feature of Firefox desktop version using PDFCreator.)
file #33021:  small-caps-test.pdf added by Stevan_White (318KiB - application/octetstream)

 

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    Follow 16 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2015-10-02 hammerandsickle Attached File- Added Proposal_for_Yuses.png, #35031
    2015-02-16 Stevan_White StatusNeed info Fix posted
    2015-02-16 hammerandsickle Attached File- Added Small caps and Gothic test.zip, #33097
    2015-02-15 Stevan_White Attached File- Added Gothic-latest-build.png, #33079
    2015-02-15 hammerandsickle Attached File- Added Test Gothic.zip, #33078
    2015-02-14 hammerandsickle Attached File- Added IE-smallcaps-win8.1.zip, #33071
    2015-02-14 hammerandsickle Attached File- Added Python Traceback error break the source code.zip, #33070
    2015-02-13 Stevan_White Attached File- Added small-caps-test.html, #33068
    2015-02-13 Stevan_White Attached File- Added FF-smallcaps-win7.png, #33065
        Attached File- Added Gothic.html, #33066
    2015-02-08 hammerandsickle Attached File- Added Shot from small-caps-test.html .7z, #33032
    2015-02-07 Stevan_White Attached File- Added small-caps-test.html, #33020
        Attached File- Added small-caps-test.pdf, #33021
        Item Groupglyph(s) missing character substitution issue
        StatusNone Need info
        Assigned toNone Stevan_White

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