Font spacing oddity in 33.8.2

[ptribble]

I've just updated to 33.8.2 on Tribblix (illumos), and there's a very strange font spacing oddity just appeared (I can confirm that 33.8.1.2 was fine).

It's most noticeable with a capital 'T', for example the Tools menu on the toolbar. The following letter is scrunched up against the upright of the T.

palemoon-toolbar.png

Most letters are fine, although F and V also appear to be slightly closer than they were before. And it only happens if, like in 'Tools', the following letter can fit under the bar of the T.

Nothing else has changed between the two versions, and I don't think I've changed the font settings from the default. Although I suspect that it's only affecting some fonts - for instance, the text entry box I'm typing in now appears to be unaffected.

(And it's especially noticeable for me as my surname is one of the words that's affected.)

[Moonchild]

Curious.
It's actually possible that fixing one particular fontentry bug exposed an issue with the font kerning of the UI font on your OS. (Kerning, by the way, is that reduction in distance if a letter or punctuation fits closer/under/above a previous letter, usually capital. e.g. combinations like Va To AV P, F. or YA)
Unfortunately I don't really have the opportunity to run/test Illumos, nor do I know where this could be configured on that OS.

[Night Wing]

I use the Menu Bar in both, as of this posting, MX Linux 23.6 (Libretto) Xfce and Debian 13 (Trixie) Xfce linux distributions. The small lower case letter "o" in Tools is not scrunched up to the capital letter "T". The problem you are having might have something to do with your linux Tribblix (illumos) distro as Moonchild has suggested.

But I am also going to add this. I am using 64 bit linux Pale Moon 33.8.2 (GTK2) whereas you might be using (GTK3). Just a guess on my part.

[vannilla]

I updated to 33.8.2 a few minutes ago and I'm experiencing the same issue.
The "Tools" label in the menu bar and the "New Tab" label for empty tabs bot have the capital T too close to the following letter.
I'm using Gentoo Linux with Xorg; Pale Moon uses GTK3. Default font is DejaVu.
It might be an issue with incorrect font handling because web content overriding my default font with its own spec (like this forum does) does not have this issue, meaning something in the DejaVu font file specifically is being mishandled in 33.8.2 but not in 33.8.1, while other fonts do not have this issue for some reason.

[Night Wing]

Below is a screenshot of my Menu Bar using 64 bit linux Pale Moon 33.8.2 (GTK2) running in 64 bit MX Linux 23.6 (Libretto) Xfce. I am also using the default settings in MX for the fonts.

[Moonchild]

Since I'm having to fly blind here, can you let me know if the attached patch solves this for you?

[vannilla]

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to solve the issue, at least on my machine.

[Moonchild]

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to solve the issue, at least on my machine.

Damn.
What about this patch, instead? There might be a subtle difference between our font cache and what Mozilla is using, causing this problem (in which case it's also likely we don't need to even touch what we had).

[vannilla]

Works for me now.
Attached a screenshot comparing the current official build (top) and the build with the second patch applied (bottom).

[Moonchild]

Alright. thanks for testing.

[ptribble]

I can confirm that the second patch fixes the issue for me too.

Thanks for the prompt fix!

[Moonchild]

Alright.
I've uplifted it to the release branch on the repo, but considering the low impact and limited targets that seem to be affected, I'm not going to go through the work needed for an out-of-band point release.

[Goodydino]

Could that be a result of harfbuzz? It attaches some letters to each other. I did not like that, so set the setting to 0.

[Moonchild]

Kerning is indeed handled by harfbuzz. It also handles ligatures.

[vannilla]

Could that be a result of harfbuzz? It attaches some letters to each other. I did not like that, so set the setting to 0.

It is, but not for the reasons you are thinking of.
The issue is solved anyway.