Bug 174031 – Safari always assumes mono-spaced square characters when loading fonts

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: FIXED
• Component: CSS

[Dima Voytenko]

See example: http://output.jsbin.com/jexixam/quiet

Initially, before the "Slow" font-face has been loaded or timed out, the sample text takes about 2.5-3x more space to layout (on iOS, it takes about 8-9 lines and once the font is loaded/timed out, it takes only 3 lines). In other words, the estimate is too rough.

It appears that Safari assumes mono-wide square characters, which is very uncommon. It might be a better option to use a fallback font to estimate character layout before the desired font is loaded (as in `font-family: Slow, Arial` where "Arial" is already available as the fallback). This would also reduce the work the browser has to do in case of timeout.

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/33083545>

[Myles C. Maxfield]

I think I fixed this in r216944. Can you see if the problem still reproduces on a nightly build?

[Dima Voytenko]

Does appear to be fixed in nightly. Thanks for the fix!