Glyph rendering problems/improvements

[milotype]

Hi,
titles and subtitles have font encoding issues across several languages (croatian, hungarian, russian), scripts (latin extended, cyrrillic) and document formats. Diacritics don't render correctly in all documents. Sometimes they are bolder, sometimes they are lighter and somtimes they render with a different font.
Check attachements below.

In the case of croatian:

• The png image at https://ptrace.gafam.info/unofficial/img/black/lqdn-gafam-poster-hr-black-5x1-2560x.png looks ok.
• The "facebook" page at https://library.gafam.info/poster.html?lang=hr&name=facebook&variant=black&passepartout=true has a problem with one of the diacritics (Č).
• The PDF file at https://ptrace.gafam.info/unofficial/pdf/black/lqdn-gafam-poster-hr-black.pdf looks ok.

Croatian

Hungarian

Russian

[milotype]

The png-images and the PDF files actually also have problems with diacritics …

[amotl]

Dear Milo,

thank you for outlining those quirks, mostly related to cyrillic characters. We appreciate it very much.

We worked on improving the rendering a while ago already, and think it got better. For your reference, those are links to the corresponding spots you've mentioned.

• https://library.gafam.info/poster.html?lang=hr&name=facebook&variant=black&passepartout=true
• https://library.gafam.info/poster.html?lang=hu&name=google&variant=black&passepartout=true
• https://library.gafam.info/poster.html?lang=ru&name=google&variant=black&passepartout=true

In order to be able to eventually close this issue, we will be happy about your feedback on this topic.

With kind regards, and a happy new year,
Andreas.

[milotype]

Overall the .png files look better for latin, cyrillic and greek, but they still don't seem to use one and the same font. For other scripts I'm not an expert.

I hope that my following observations will help:

Differenes in the Croatian versions:

• Croatian .png file
  

• Croatian single page file
  

German double s:

The german "double s" dosn't look good, neither in the .png file, nor in the "Single page" version.

• German .png file
  

• German single page file
  

Issues in other scripts:

There are still issues in "Single page" versions in greek, cyrillic, hebrew:

• they use different fonts then in the .png file (serif fonts)

Proposed solution:

Maybe you could consider to generally use some of the following fonts, because neither the font FuturaMaxiBold nor Futura have have extended character sets:

• Open Sans - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans
  latin, greek, cyrillic, hebrew

• Source Sans Pro - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Source+Sans+Pro
  latin, greek, cyrillic

• Noto Sans - https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans
  latin, greek, cyrillic, devanagari

• Inter - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inter
  latin, greek, cyrillic

Side notes:

• I'm aware that this is a complex issue. When setting the font-family in CSS, maybe it might help to define some OS-specific fonts in the list and to make sure to set sans-serif at the end.

• Also, if possible, check that the generation of .png files and "Single page" files are identical, in order to generate identical outputs.

My environment:

Mac OSX 10.11.6
Firefox 78.15.0

[amotl]

Dear Milo,

thanks a stack for taking the time to respond, and for your valuable suggestions. I will try to adjust the fonts, according to your recommendations, within the next iteration.

German

The German ẞ does really look bad. Thanks for spotting!

Croatian

On the Croatian facebook poster, I would like to ask about the spot where you still found the misrendered ČITAŠ, because I can't spot it within the resources referenced below. Please note that some resources, like the mosaic pictures, have not been refreshed yet. Can you reference specific URLs to problematic resources you are observing?

• https://library.gafam.info/poster.html?lang=hr&name=facebook&variant=black
• https://ptrace.gafam.info/unofficial/img/black/lqdn-gafam-poster-hr-black-5x1-2560x.png
• https://ptrace.gafam.info/unofficial/pdf/black/lqdn-gafam-poster-hr-black.pdf

Others

There are still issues in "Single page" versions in greek, cyrillic, hebrew: They use different fonts then in the .png file (serif fonts).

I agree the Hebrew font has serifs on the web view, thank you. However, I can't spot much of a difference on e.g. Greek or Ukrainian between the web view and the rendered artefact. If it's just my ignorance, please apologize ;]. Can you point out specific differences, including corresponding URLs?

Hebrew

• https://library.gafam.info/poster.html?lang=he&name=google&variant=black
• https://ptrace.gafam.info/unofficial/pdf/black/lqdn-gafam-poster-he-black.pdf
• https://ptrace.gafam.info/unofficial/img/black/lqdn-gafam-poster-he-black-5x1-2560x.png

Greek

• https://library.gafam.info/poster.html?lang=el&name=facebook&variant=black
• https://ptrace.gafam.info/unofficial/pdf/black/lqdn-gafam-poster-el-black.pdf

Ukrainian

• https://library.gafam.info/poster.html?lang=uk&name=facebook&variant=black
• https://ptrace.gafam.info/unofficial/pdf/black/lqdn-gafam-poster-uk-black.pdf

Further notes

For your reference, my workstation is on macOS 10.15.7 and Firefox 108.0.2, and the production rendering is taking place on Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye), using DeckTape/Puppeteer, effectively wrapping a Chromium 99.0.4844.0 instance.

Please note that artefacts for specific languages, currently cs,hu,hr,pl,ru,tr,zh, are rendered on macOS instead of Linux ¹, using the same PosterKit machinery. It yields better font quality, probably because better system fonts are available there. This is happening at the PosterKit Makefile.

Your contributions and suggestions on this topic are very much appreciated. Apologies that I am so slow on implementing your recommendations.

With kind regards,
Andreas.

Footnotes

1. It might be the reason for some deviances your are observing. However, even if the rendered artefacts have higher priority, this does not mean we should leave the web-based versions behind, so your reports are very much welcome. ↩

[milotype]

@amotl
I've just checked the site with my iPhone 6, version 12.5.6.
Everything looks much better there in most latin, greek, cyrillic and hebrew scripts. :-)
So maybe/probably my old Firefox and MacOS cause the problems ... :-(

1. Still there seem to be issues in German:

• German .png file
  

• German "Single page" file
  

2. Still there seem to be issues in Czech outputs (different fonts used within the .png file):

[amotl]

Thank you again!

• I will try to address the ẞ issue for German and the difference in font selection for Czech on the next iteration.
• The rendering issue of the capital S fortunately did not make it to the PDF, right? So, it has lower priority for me, but thanks for spotting! I think it may be a glitch with the auto-fitting library in webview mode.