Bug 325752

Summary:	Font weights not correctly recognized
Product:	[I don't know] kde	Reporter:	Samuel Sudhof <samuel.sudhof>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs mailing-list <unassigned-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED DOWNSTREAM
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	nate
Priority:	NOR
Version:	4.10.5
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Kubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Samuel Sudhof 2013-10-07 23:02:32 UTC

A certain otf font, called Mercury, is incorrectly recognized. The system assumes the bold weight to be the normal one, and the normal one to be the light weight. Programs that do not allow selection of light weight (which is most of them) will always use the bold font.

The font in question is officially licensed. I cannot attach it, as a license costs about 200$.

Someone, not me, also tried to use a bootleg copy of this font (also otf), which worked without problems (but the font did not include special characters).

The filenames are:
MercuryTextG2-Roman.otf -- recognized as light
MercuryTextG2-Italic.otf
MercuryTextG2-Bold.otf -- recognized as the normal weight
MercuryTextG2-BoldItalic.otf

Is there a way to manually fix this, a config file, maybe? If not, I would like to request this feature.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Mercury Text G2 in the weights described above using any method
2. Open a program that uses fonts
3. Select Mercury Text G2 as a font
Actual Results:  
Mercury Text G2 always appears bold

Expected Results:  
Mercury Text G2 should appear in any weight: At least roman, bold, italic and bold-italic

Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2013-10-08 02:10:06 UTC

Is this bug restricted to KDE applications? How do pure Qt applications or GTK+ applications render the font? Additionally, I suspect the font itself is buggy, so you could use the FontForge application to fix it.

Comment 2 Samuel Sudhof 2013-10-08 02:17:52 UTC

It's not restricted to KDE applications, Inkscape has the problem, too. Good call with FontForge. I'll try it tomorrow. Is there any FontForge output you would be interested in?

Comment 3 Samuel Sudhof 2013-10-08 02:32:53 UTC

No such problem exists using the same font in MS Windows 7.

Comment 4 Samuel Sudhof 2013-10-08 14:21:44 UTC

It seems the reason for this is the OS/2 field. It conflicts with the information in the PS Names field.

KDE seems to rely only on the OS/2 information. I would really appreciate it, if there was a way to overwrite how KDE recognized font families and weights.

Comment 5 Samuel Sudhof 2013-10-08 14:22:52 UTC

Changed importance to whishlist.

Comment 6 Nate Graham 2020-09-28 23:48:28 UTC

Probably better to simply fix the font. Please contact the font's authors/developers.