DejaVu fonts shows "tighted"

As you can see, "V" is very close to "e" in "Ver", "T" is very close to "e" in "Terminal", and "A" is very close to "y" in "Ayuda".

As you can see, the characters rendered with the Bitstream Vera fonts doesn't suffer the problem which DejaVu fonts has.

I think this is actually a problem with the way Pango handles kerning for Latin. DejaVu looks fine with versions of Pango before 1.11.0. Bitstream Vera is not affected because it has no kerning. See Bug #34178.

Here's another way to see that it has something to do with Pango: Install freetype2-demos. Use ftstring to display a string like "VeTeAy" with DejaVu. ftstring uses Freetype directly, without going through Pango, so it looks fine.

Ok, it seems you are right. I tried with ftstring (from freetype2-demos) as well as the kfontview (from KDE), and renders the text perfectly.

Text correctly rendered with ftstring.

Text correctly rendered with ffontview.

upstream bug report: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334758

DejaVu LGC, which is simply DejaVu with all the Arabic and Armenian characters removed, looks fine. This is looking more and more like a Pango bug to me.

I have this problem as well, on AMD64

This should read "officials", the "ic" part seems to be the problem, as this is what I have noticed for the past few days.

Bruce, what versions of Pango, DejaVu and Mozilla/Firefox are you using?

The overkerning issue will be fixed in next month's release.

please recheck with
http://people.ubuntu.com/~doko/ttf-dejavu_2.4b-0ubuntu2_all.deb

Sorry: I've tried it, but the problem is still here.

Could you please try again Ricardo.
You must be using the previous fonts you had on your system.

2.4.b fixes this.

I do the following:

1. sudo dpkg --purge --force-depends ttf-dejavu
2. sudo dpkg -i ttf-dejavu_2.4b-0ubuntu2_all.deb

Obviously, I'm not using the previous fonts.

And the problem is still here.

Following screen captures...

As you can see in the Terminal menu bar, the characters has wrong kerning.

The kerning is correct, as you can see.

By the way, I got the following messages during the ttf-dejavu installation. I don't know if it can help:

Configuring ttf-dejavu (2.4b-0ubuntu2) ...
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.
Use of uninitialized value in print at /var/lib/defoma/scripts/gs.defoma line 10 8.

Sorry, the line might say "108" instead of "10 8".

> http://librarian.launchpad.net/1847447/new_dejavu.jpg
That looks like proper kerning to me. No letter is bumping into each other, kerning is tight but that's another issue.

> http://librarian.launchpad.net/1847452/bitstream.jpg
There is no kerning at all here. Pango 1.12 doesn't kern properly TrueType fonts that don't have OpenType tables.

OK, I just realised the very first screenshot has the same kerning. My bad.

So you'd rather have no kerning at all?

> So you'd rather have no kerning at all?

Sorry, I don't understand the question. I'm rather newbie in typography :/

Is there any test I can do in order to tell you the results?

Don't be sorry :) I should be for using jargon.

The original screenshot http://librarian.launchpad.net/1783378/DejaVu.png and http://librarian.launchpad.net/1847447/new_dejavu.jpg both show characters with special spacing for some sequences.

DejaVu fonts have the same spacing, or kerning, values as BitStream Vera fonts.

BitStream Vera fonts are TTF, but the old kind. DejaVu fonts are TTF with OpenType tables. Because Pango 1.12 has introduced a bug while fixing other things (ligatures, combining diacritics, etc.), BitStream Vera fonts don't show any kerning. So you don't have the e closer to the stem of the T for example. This is wrong.
The e should go a bit below the top arms of the T.

With Pango <1.11 Bitstream Vera was kerned properly, but DejaVu wasn't.

Normally DejaVu fonts space characters exactly as Bitstream Vera fonts. If you don't like how they are spaced then we could look into that.

The spaces might be too tight at the size you're using but fine at other sizes.

http://librarian.launchpad.net/1783620/ftstring.png looks like we need to add kerning to the "eT" sequence because "eTe" doesn't look good.

http://librarian.launchpad.net/1783621/kfontview.png doesn't do any kerning. There's too much space around the T and A is further from y than it is from e.

http://librarian.launchpad.net/1824481/Screenshot.png is a Firefox bug, it doesn't like our ligatures (ffi here).

> > http://librarian.launchpad.net/1847452/bitstream.jpg
> There is no kerning at all here. Pango 1.12 doesn't kern
> properly TrueType fonts that don't have OpenType tables.

confirmed, opened for pango1.0 as well

I'd rather open a new bug for Bitstream Vera not being kerned.

here the upstream Pango bug report: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336026

> So you'd rather have no kerning at all?

Sorry, I don't understand the question. I'm rather newbie in typography :/

Is there any test I can do in order to tell you the results?

Oops, sorry, I send the same post twice.

> Because Pango 1.12 has introduced a bug while fixing other things (ligatures, combining diacritics, etc.), BitStream Vera fonts don't show any kerning. So you don't have the e closer to the stem of the T for example. This is wrong. The e should go a bit below the top arms of the T.

Following your indications, it seems that DejaVu behavior is correct and BitStream Vera isn't. Is this correct?

> Following your indications, it seems that DejaVu behavior is correct and BitStream Vera isn't. Is this correct?

Yes, but it's true letters are tight at the size used in your screenshot.

Try using similar text in Gedit at different sizes, you'll see it only looks bad at some sizes.
We'll try to leave more space so DejaVu looks better than Bitstream Vera. But right now DejaVu 2.4b and Bitstream Vera should have the same space, if they don't it's a font renderer bug.

Curiously, using Gedit with text at different sizes, *all* works well.

It seems that the problem appears only in some applications, not all.

Look at the font preview (in Spanish, "Vista previa"): looks well. But the Terminal's menubar looks tight.

I tried with several sizes, and all renders ok.

Look at "VeTeAy" text inside the Gedit's document. Looks ok.

And look at "Ver" in the Gedit menubar. Looks tight.

It appears to have been fixed upstream - http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

"The current version is 2.4.1, which is an intermediate release to fix the kerning bug with Pango (LGC version is still 2.4)"

Sounds great. Anyone could make a .deb package to test it?

Lucida Sans that comes with jre has a similar overkerning issue for application menu titles. This is not a font bug as far as I'm concerned.

Strangely Firefox does not have the problem while other Gtk+ apps do.

This is a Gtk bug, all fonts show some wrong spacing with underlined glyphs in gtkMenu.
Look at the "ab" in "Tabs". Some fonts have "He" too tight in "Help".

This was taken with Pango from CVS that apples kerning to TTF fonts.

Is the GTK task required? Isn't that rather a pango issue?

On 4/18/06, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> wrote:
> Is the GTK task required? Isn't that rather a pango issue?
The original bug is about DejaVu being too tight in menus.
This isn't related to the Dejavu+Pango overkerning bug that has been fixed.
Other fonts display the same "tighted" behaviour with underlined
characters in gtk Menu.

This is not a DejaVu specific bug and seems to only occur in gtk
menus. Pango spaces characters according to the fonts everywhere else
(Gedit text, etc.).

closing the ttf-dejavu task, uploaded ttf-dejavu_2.5-0ubuntu2

The new Dejavu font works for me, is this a tempory workaround?

Sorry, wrong bug.

Is this still a problem? bug #34178 points to the same upstream pango bug but a comment in this report says they're not dupes.

Dean Sas schrieb:
> Is this still a problem? bug #34178 points to the same upstream pango
> bug but a comment in this report says they're not dupes.
>
>
It is.

The pango task should be enough. Feel free to reopen if you think that's not the case

the bug has been fixed upstream

the bug is fixed in gutsy now