Bug 15188 – Safari Windows draws smaller fonts than it is told to

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: WORKSFORME
• Component: New Bugs

[David Jaša]

I've set font sizes to 10 for variable width and 9 to fixed width fonts with minimum size 9 ("Never use font sizes smaller than 9"). Result is that on majority of pages (including this bugzilla) Webkit uses much smaller fonts (about 1/2 - 3/4 of selected font sizes). This is pretty inconvenient on hi-res displays.

Webkit build: r25505, Windows, Safari 3.0.3

[David Jaša]

Created attachment 16264 [details]
screenshot

At least half of the text on the web page is smaller than selected minimum font size 9.

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

This appears to be a Windows-only issue, although the screenshot appears to be Gnome on Linux.

David, what environment are you running Safari Windows in?  If you're using Wine or VMWare or a similar virtual machine, please provide all relevant information (Linux distribution, virtual machine, service pack level of Windows, and versions for all software involved).  Thanks!

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

FWIW, opening the "screenshot" attachment in a background tab on OS X with a debug build of WebKit causes an assertion failure (Bug 15191).

[Dave Hyatt]

I don't really understand what the bug is here.  The normal font size is 16px (12pt), and you've picked something smaller than that.  So of course you'll see smaller fonts...

[David Jaša]

Created attachment 16291 [details]
Preferences - Advanced screenshot

ddkillzer: this IS Windows XP SP2 running on physical hardware with Tango Patcher installed. But you can confirm this bug on mac: set minimum font size and find out, if Safari/Mac render all character equal size or lagrer.

Dave Hyatt: I assume that if I set up minimum font size to 9 points (see screenshot), then no character rendered by webkit is smaller than this threshold. Half of the webkit-rendered chracters are smaller on the original screenshot.

PS: the fact, that M$ Windows (at least until XP) doesn't autodetect DPI doesn't mean, that people don't set it up correctly and it also doesn't mean, that all people use 96 DPI displays. The computer, where was screenshot taken, has 125 DPI display and in last ten years I used various displays, but none had exactly 96 DPI. Probably closest to this was my previous laptop with 14" 1024x768 display, which had 91 - 92 DPI...

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> ddkillzer: this IS Windows XP SP2 running on physical hardware with Tango
> Patcher installed. But you can confirm this bug on mac: set minimum font size
> and find out, if Safari/Mac render all character equal size or lagrer.

The "Tango Patcher" software seems to modify the user interface on Windows.

http://www.winaddons.com/?s=tango+patcher

Could you try uninstalling (or disabling) it, rebooting, then reverifying if the fonts appear to be rendered too small?  Thanks!

[Dave Hyatt]

The UI setting for minimum font size is not a point size.  It is a CSS pixel size.  This is confusing right now because SafariWin is (incorrectly) using points for the font picker when it should not.   Every other browser besides SafariWin uses pixels for font size settings.

We plan to fix SafariWin to use pixels in the font picker (like all the other browsers do).  I can see why this was confusing.

[Robert Blaut]

(In reply to comment #7)
> The UI setting for minimum font size is not a point size.  It is a CSS pixel
> size.  This is confusing right now because SafariWin is (incorrectly) using
> points for the font picker when it should not.   Every other browser besides
> SafariWin uses pixels for font size settings.
> 
> We plan to fix SafariWin to use pixels in the font picker (like all the other
> browsers do).  I can see why this was confusing.

The new UI for selecting fonts was released in Safari 3.0.4 and works as expected. I mark the bug as WORKSFORME. 

Reporter, if you still experience the problem feel free to reopen the bug.