I'm working on a website where the users will be printing pages from the site fairly frequently, in order to give them to people without internet access. Some of the text comes out garbled when printed on our users' office printers:
That's supposed to say Reduced Fare and Free Ride Programs, Chicago Transit Authority.
My first thought was that this has something to do with the font we're using, so I changed that text to have font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif. Some google research made me think those font settings were widely supported and shouldn't cause problems, but our users are still having the issue.
Even if you don't know exactly how to fix this problem, I would appreciate suggestions about
What other than the font selection could be causing it?
If you do think it has something to do with the font, what is a good font to use? Or how could I figure that out, is it printer-specific?
Update
The page is being printed from the browser, which for this particular group of users is IE8. I'm not sure what version of Windows they're on. I've tested this on a Windows machine with IE8 in our office, and was not able to reproduce the issue. So while the browser might be a factor, I don't believe it's the only factor.
Second Update
The font we're using is Libre Baskerville, which we're loading through the Google Fonts API. It renders fine on screen, and actually prints with no issue from some of the printers at our client's office. The text only comes out garbled when printed on a Lexmark MS410dn.
I saw these same types of printing errors. I created a PDF in Indesign on Windows 10 using the Libre Baskerville font. When I tried to print the PDF on OSX using Preview I got the same garbled glyphs seen above. I fixed it by uninstalling the Libre Baskerville fonts which were Truetype format and installing Libre Baskerville fonts in Opentype format and resetting the fonts in the document. It seemed to work.
In the end the simplest solution was to use a different font for printing. The issue only happened with the Libre Baskerville font on a few specific printers, so in our print.css stylesheet we just use a basic serif font instead. Not ideal, but at least the printouts are legible.
In the original post I said that I had tried switching the font in the printouts and users were still having problems. This turned out to be due to caching of the print.css stylesheet, so that fix actually did solve the problem.
In the long term we'll probably find a font that works consistently on all their printers and switch the website over to that as well.
For the record (and anyone reading this with a similar issue), I had exactly the same issue trying to print a document written in Libre Baskerville on my laptop, in LibreOffice. The font is embedded in both RTF and PDF formats and the text is garbled in the same way. I also worked around the issue by changing to a different font. It's a pity as LibreBaskerville is a nice font.
Try replacing the True Type version of the font with the Open Type version - I am now able to print Libre Baskerville with no issues. The Open Type version is not easy to find as most downloads (including Google Fonts) only give you the option of a .ttf file. Search for a .otf file version - I found one here: https://www.broble.com/download-free-font/libre-baskerville
It might be that the imported font files have some errors in them. Sometimes, if you use a online font to webfont converter it makes some mistakes with the conversion. You could try Google Fonts. Find a serif font that you like and use their files and import scripts.
For example, if you want to use the font Bitter:
Just put #import url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Bitter); at the top of your CSS file
Use font-family: 'Bitter', serif; in your style declarations.
NB: The serif part is a fallback in case something goes wrong, then the clients browser chooses the default serif font instead.
Related
Recently had a customer send in a ticket complaining that their font has changed (within the week or so). The font on the site has not changed in probably a decade. What I suspect is that perhaps a recent windows up that times in line with the change is effecting the font he sees, or, more likely, a setting changed on his end.
the font we use
font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif
It is my understanding that Helvetica Neue will likely get replaced by something else on windows since, just from googling, I find that font is not included in windows.
My question is, is there any way I can help debug this on his end to figure out exactly what is going on? It does make the site difficult to read for this user and I would like to fix it, and also know for sure what I am talking about. I usually try very hard not to just reply with, "looks good on my machine". Inspecting it shows the same font family as what I posted above.
None of the font options in that css appear to be what is showing.
The one distinguishing trait I can see in the font is the letters de overlap or touch.
This is for web content, the browsers mentioned where most recent Chrome, which I also tested on (verified exact same version numbers) and did not have the issue, and Edge which I do not have.
If you can't access their computer, it's going to be hard to pinpoint the exact cause. Windows font substitution is the normal culprit in this situation:
As stated here:
https://office-watch.com/2021/windows-substituting-arial-font-for-helvetica/
"Windows is setup to use Arial whenever it sees a reference to ‘Helvetica’. This happens at the Windows level and doesn’t just apply to Microsoft Office. Most web browsers get the same thing – web pages that ask for ‘Helvetica’ to display in web page will get the Arial font instead. It drives web designers crazy, especially since CSS has a way to choose from a family of preferred fonts.
Way down in the bowels of the Windows Registry is HCLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\NTCurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes which lists the substitutions."
Additionally, if you run a comparison of arial vs helvetica neue...using the word video you mentioned, you get this:
Notice the difference in kerning (separation between letters/characters) between characters 'd' and 'e'. Arial appears 'clumped' when compared to Helvetica Neue.
I have no reputable source to provide, but this exact situation has happened to me before. It was caused by me installing a faulty font of a similar name.
It was hell to read most websites and I had to get a chrome extension to change everything to Arial to be readable. Ask them if they're having this problem on other websites as well then tell them to delete the "Helvetica Neue" font file on their computer (Mine was named Helvatica Neue56878 if it helps). This solved the problem for me.
How to debug: Check whether the specific computer have the Helvetica font installed. You can do this by going to the Fonts settings of windows. To open Font Settings just open windows search and type Font:
Font Settings will show you Available Fonts that are installed in your computer. Type Helvetica in the search bar and see if Helvetica font is installed:
If it's not, you can go and download and install the font on that computer and the problem would be solved.
CSS solution: To avoid this problem from happening in the future, you can include the font's .ttf file in your project and use #font-face to set it as a font on your project.
#font-face {
font-family: "digital-7";
font-style: normal;
src: url("~/assets/fonts/digital-7.ttf");
}
You can use it like so:
.container{
font-family: "digital-7";
font-size: 4em;
color: black;
}
I have seen a couple of projects where they just mention the name of the fonts they want to use in the CSS file without any mention of the source or the TTF or other font files.
eg
code {
font-family: source-code-pro,Menlo,Monaco,Consolas,"Courier New",monospace
}
When I remove those fonts via CSS in inspect element I can see the fonts are changed. So the code works. But I don't understand how the browser figures from where the fonts should be downloaded.
The code works even in incognito so not sure if the browser caching the font is a valid explanation.
Notice that the last setting in the font-family list is sans-serif.
If the local system has absolutely none of the other fonts loaded locally then the system will use whatever it has set as its default sans-serif font.
That is why it looks as though 'it works' when you say this:
#Fabrizio Calderan loves trees I checked the system fonts with this css-tricks.com/snippets/css/system-font-stack link. But the mentioned font family is not matching any of the fonts in the system fonts. So the default font should be picked right?
You are right, it picks the default font, but the version that is sans-serif.
As you can see in the above picture,I created a sample.html file and used the font-family for the body tag. So the source provided does not mention in font-family section. in the result, fonts will load from "Fonts" folder in my windows folder. (Of course if you use Windows OS and website locally, mentioned process will be happen!)
There are several ways the browser decides what fonts are downloaded/used:
As user 'Fabrizio Calderan loves trees' stated (paraphrased):
If no sources are provided, they are loaded from the computer running the webpage in a browser.
The programmer uses external APIs or links that embed a font. An example of this is Google Fonts, which lets programmers choose fonts they want (and select them), and embed them using either a <link> tag (put into HTML code) or #import tag (put into CSS file).
The website you are looking at may contain #font-face statements in their CSS, which links a common name (i.e., 'Source Code Pro') to a font file. You can read more about #font-face here and here.
If you can't find evidence of any of these, could you possibly share a link to the webpage's source code?
EDIT
I took a look at the code in the website. It seems like the fonts styling in the display/textarea is:
.displayArea{
font-family:"Lucida Sans","Lucida Sans Regular","Lucida Grande","Lucida Sans Unicode",Geneva,Verdana,sans-serif;
}
And, there doesn't appear to be a source of these fonts, so it is part of the 1st category I listed above. Basically, the fonts in quotes are fonts that may be used if already preinstalled inside the client's computer, if not, the browser goes down the list and keeps checking whether the client has the font installed. The ending font is sans-serif, which is a default font that all computers have, so it serves as a backup in case all other fonts aren't available.
I know this is an extremely basic and stupid question, but I seem to be having a genuinely curious problem.
When using what are supposed to be web-safe fonts like Didot, and using
header h1{
font-family: Didot, serif;
font-size: 36px;
}
my browser just displays the standard serif font.
In fact I can't seem to get it to display any web safe font, it will only display either the standard serif or sans-serif font. I know my selector is correct because I CAN change between serif and sans-serif, but I know its not displaying other web-safe fonts because I tried both Arial and Helvetica (which are both definitely web safe) and when I refreshed from one to another there was absolutely no difference in the font displayed.
I'm a complete beginner and I'm using the simplest possible beginner environment, just an html page linking to a css file which I'm opening with my browser (the url shows up as file:///C:/Users/Agent%201/Desktop/Web%20Projects/ResumeSite/index.html if that is at all relevant). I've tried opening it with both chrome and edge, same results on both
Is there something wrong with my css? Or are there limitations when just opening a local html file with my browser?
Sorry if I'm this is a really dumb question, but I really can't find an answer as to why my fonts aren't working, I've tried !important and some other weird solution I found which involves changing the selector to "header h1, header h1 *" and that did nothing.
Thank-you for any help you can provide me!
When using what are supposed to be web-safe fonts like Didot, and using...
Didot is not a "web-safe" font.
Didot is included with macOS, which may lead some web-designers to assume that it's also available on other platforms (like Windows, Linux and Android) or that those platforms have automatically-mapped equivalents (like how many browsers will map Helvetica to Arial), however that is not guaranteed.
Also, just because a typeface is included with an OS does not mean it is licensed to you to use commercially or in a website - you can be sued for publishing an OS-licensed font onto the public web without having your own font-license.
A "web-safe" font is a typeface that is broadly installed and supported by most contemporary browsers without the need for additional downloads or font installations.
Many typefaces are broadly installed, such as Microsoft's Core fonts for the web which are preinstalled on all Windows computers - and many other operating systems such as macOS either come with the same fonts or have very similar equivalents (e.g. Helvetica instead of Arial) which are automatically mapped by the browser.
The only way to determine if a font is "web-safe" is by doing your own leg-work and manually checking to see if all-or-most of your target users' devices have that typeface available. You can check font availability on Wikipedia and other sites:
macOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typefaces_included_with_macOS
Windows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typefaces_included_with_Microsoft_Windows
iOS: http://iosfonts.com/
Android: Consult Android's fonts.xml for the minimum set of stock fonts and default fallback mappings (e.g. "Helvetica" goes to "sans-serif").
You might notice that Android's font list is very... short. That's because the base Android OS isn't what ships on most peoples' phones: Google's layer on top of Android, and OEMs (like Samsung, etc) will add their own fonts on top, but I don't know where to get that list from at-present, sorry.
A "web-safe font stack" means that at least one of the fonts listed in a font-family property value can be safely assumed to be available for use, not that all of them are - nor that the first-preferred-font will be available.
And any font-family list can be made "safe" by adding a CSS fallback generic-family name to the end (i.e. specifying the least-preferred font). Those names are specified in the CSS Fonts Module and are:
serif
sans-serif
cursive
fantasy
monospace
In your case, the property font: Didot, serif is "web-safe" because it has the serif generic-family name at the end. Your visitors will only see the Didot font being used if they already have it installed on their computer, phone, tablet, etc.
If you do want to use Didot, then you need to publish it as a WOFF file and add it to your stylesheet with a #font-face rule: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/using-font-face/
I have been having issues trying to get third party monospaced fonts to work properly with PDFsharp. I'm simply installing these fonts to the windows OS.
I do not want to use standard monospace fonts such as Courier new or Consolas.
I have tried many monospace fonts, they all seem to suffer from the same problem when being used by PDFsharp - Their letter spacing is rendered incorrectly (but consistently).
I can get third party non-monospaced fonts to work just fine, such as open sans.
Here are a couple of examples of fonts and their rendered outputs:
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
It looks as if PDFsharp uses a different font for measuring, not the font used for drawing.
Did you reboot the computer after installing the fonts? If the problem persists after a reboot, an SSCCE will help to replicate the problem.
http://sscce.org/
Our web designer suggested using Cambria as a font. In looking at various font references online, we couldn't find authoritative sources that listed recent (post 2010) browser support for various fonts.
Which sources do you use to determine how supported a particular font is? I'm guessing there are reports for fonts like there are for browsers, but we haven't found anything reliable yet.
I think you don't need to worry too much about native browser support for fonts. Instead you should consider two things:
Using #font-face
Using a good font stack
Combine the two and you should be safe, no matter what.
For #font-face, you can generate the font and make it cross-browser compatible.
Start by licensing the font from here ( http://new.myfonts.com/search/cambria/ ) or somewhere else.
Then generate the #font-face code with Font Squirrel ( http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator ) or another service. The result will be cross browser compatible in nearly all cases.
Finally, add the font to a font stack so that there is a fall back in case something happens with your custom Cambria font. Something like this for whichever rule you are working with: font-family: Cambria, Georgia, Palatino, Times New Roman, serif;
Of course, you could also choose a similar free font through Font Squirrel or use Google's Web Fonts.
More good info here: http://sixrevisions.com/css/font-face-guide/
You won't find Cambria and the other fonts in its family natively installed on computers running anything but Windows Vista and newer, and you'll only have luck on other systems if they have Office 2007/2008 and newer installed.
As long as the font is present on a user's computer, any browser should be able to handle it, even without the need for #font-face embedding. The idea of font embedding is to get a browser to recognize and use a font that isn't installed on a user's system, rather than getting the browser to understand and render the font.
You're not going to find something that works on everything. Try Cambria, Georgia, serif; Georgia's a reasonably close substitute that's very widespread, and the serif default will work anywhere.
Discussion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambria_%28typeface%29
The browser doesn't have much to say as to the fonts it supports; they are dictated by the fonts present in the underlying OS.
It's hard to find support references for particular fonts. However, #font-face is widely supported and regardless, a good font stack with fail-safe fonts is a must-have.