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Issue metadata

Status: WontFix
Owner:
Closed: Feb 2018
Cc:
Components:
EstimatedDays: ----
NextAction: ----
OS: Windows
Pri: 3
Type: Compat



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'kern' table is ignored when rendering TTF glyphs.

Reported by paul.gru...@gmail.com, Dec 8 2016

Issue description

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/54.0.2840.99 Safari/537.36

Example URL:

Steps to reproduce the problem:
1. Display any text using TTF font that only contains 'kern' talbe for kerning (no GPOS/GSUB tables), such as 'Bell MT' series, which is standard on my Win8.1 x64.

2. Turn on auto-kerning feature in css: .xr_kern {text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; font-feature-settings: "kern" 1;}

3. Notice that the text is displayed without the auto-kerning feature. If you switch to any other font that has GPOS/GSUB tables, the problem goes away.

What is the expected behavior?

What went wrong?
The text should be auto-kerned, which is not the issue.

Does it occur on multiple sites: N/A

Is it a problem with a plugin? No 

Did this work before? N/A 

Does this work in other browsers? Yes

Chrome version: 54.0.2840.99  Channel: n/a
OS Version: 6.3
Flash Version: Shockwave Flash 23.0 r0
 
Labels: M-57
Labels: TE-NeedsTriageHelp

Comment 3 by tkent@chromium.org, Dec 19 2016

Components: Blink>Fonts

Comment 4 by e...@chromium.org, Jan 2 2017

Owner: drott@chromium.org
Status: Assigned (was: Unconfirmed)

Comment 5 by drott@chromium.org, Jan 3 2017

Cc: bunge...@chromium.org behdad@chromium.org
Labels: -Pri-2 Pri-3
Thanks for the useful report and test case. The usage of kern tables for kerning is not recommended anymore:
https://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/recom.htm

"If compatibility with legacy environments is not a concern, font vendors are encouraged to record kerning in the GPOS table's kern feature and not in the kern table."

If I understand the portrait of this font at https://www.microsoft.com/typography/Fonts/family.aspx?FID=157 correctly, it was released in 1992. It might still be shipping in Win 8.1 in a version with kern table only. 

Nevertheless, I am reducing the priority of this issue, since we're currently not prioritizing fixes for the legacy kern table. 

Ben, if I am not mistaken, we're retrieving the kerning pair adjustments using
typeface->getKerningPairAdjustments(glyphs, 2, kerningAdjustments) (see HarfBuzzFace.cpp) - I haven't checked but could this be returning wrong values for Bell MT?
getKerningPairAdjustments was only ever implemented for FreeType. It didn't seem worth it to keep working on it given that it couldn't be implemented on Mac and it would be superseded by proper shaping. I believe it could be implemented for DirectWrite.

Comment 7 by drott@chromium.org, Jan 3 2017

Thanks for the clarification.

Comment 8 by e...@chromium.org, Feb 8 2018

Status: WontFix (was: Assigned)
Closing as per discussion.

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