Firefox for Linux – Urdu Font Rendering

Finally, I found the solution to the Firefox Urdu Font related bug in Dapper. Me, the newbie, the linux illiterate who didn’t even know Tux; I solved a bug in an open source software that I am using on my open source operating system.

After upgrading to Dapper, I found that Firefox in Dapper does not render Urdu fonts properly. Since I spend a lot of time reading Urdu blogs and news sites, it was a major issue. It even forced me to install Konqueror, Galeon, Epiphany, Swiftfox, Firefox’s mozilla built. I spent many hours reading bug reports, comments on the bug reports, following different forum discussions and sharing my problem with users on all these platforms. I tried many solutions none of them worked out. On my way I found that several other people using different Linux distros were facing the same problem.

Then finally I found a discussion where some users were suggesting that Pango support should be disabled for Firefox. They suggested eachother to add MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 line in /etc/environment file. I tried this solution but it didn’t work. Then I tried MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0 and bingo!

Now I can read Urdu web pages and firefox renders these web pages perfectly displaying Urdu fonts beautifully even better than the Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows.

I am not sure about what was really wrong with Firefox but I guess that Ubuntu Dapper has pango support enabled for selective locales only. Firefox didn’t render Urdu fonts using Pango. I am not sure about this and would be grateful if someone confirms this to me.

The moral of story is that my Ubuntu Linux is very powerful and using it I can do whatever I want. You the windows user? Can you do this with your Windows?

Aug 18, 2006 Tags: , , , , , | Comments 14



14 Responses to “Firefox for Linux – Urdu Font Rendering”

  1. Touseef Liaqat Says:
    August 25th, 2006 at 3:26 pm

    Urdu font problem in Firefox is hurting a lot of people in Windows XP too. Do you have any solution for XP users. I know you dont like windows. But anyway?

  2. Noumaan Says:
    August 25th, 2006 at 10:03 pm

    Dear Touseef,

    Since Windows is a closed platform it is trivial to find out what’s disturbing there. Unlike Ubuntu GNU/Linux where a non-expert like me can trace the cause of problem due to the open steps in development and bug tracking processes.

  3. Sajid Says:
    October 10th, 2006 at 7:00 pm

    I am totaly newbie. Can you tell me what’s actually pango is? I just installed ubuntu.

  4. Noumaan Says:
    October 10th, 2006 at 11:03 pm

    Sajid Pango is a font rendering engine. Firefox in Ubuntu does not use Pango to render fonts because Pango would slow it down. Even though firefox renders Urdu text in a readable way but it does not display popular Urdu fonts. So one need to choose between Font rendering or a Slower firefox.

  5. Babar Haq Says:
    December 7th, 2006 at 7:51 am

    Salam Nauman

    Was trying to look for your mobile number:) We are busy migrating an NGO in Quetta to Ubuntu Linux. They need urdu support. I have installed urdu Lanuguage Support but both in firefox and openoffice (after enabling input method to urdu) it shows square boxes with numbers in urdu text.

    Any suggestions?

    Regards,
    Babar Haq

  6. Noumaan Says:
    December 7th, 2006 at 9:58 am

    Wslam Babar,

    Did you install Urdu fonts. You would need Nafees Web Naskh, Urdu Naskh Asiatype and if you don’t mind using microsoft fonts then Tahoma is useful too. In order to display the fonts correctly in Firefox you would need to enable pango for it, to do this open /etc/environment in text editor with super user rights and add the following line:

    MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0
    Save, exit and restart.

    Please let me know if this solved your problem.

  7. Babar Says:
    December 9th, 2006 at 3:37 pm

    Salam

    Noumaan, I already tried that but its not working for me.

    Babar

  8. Muhammad Shakir Aziz Says:
    December 9th, 2006 at 7:05 pm

    It did not worked for me also last time when i did it. its solution is to use Konquerer or Galeon. Galeon is perfact solution in case of Ubuntu it is Gnome’s web browser and have all abilities as Firefox has urdu font rendering is ok in it.(This is my personal experience and worked in Dapper perfectly when i was an Ubuntu user now prefer Kubuntu).
    Regards
    Shakir

  9. Noumaan Says:
    December 10th, 2006 at 2:31 am

    Babar,

    In most cases you need only two things to get started in Urdu quickly:

    1. language-support-ur package which you can download or upgrade via synaptic. I think you already have it installed.
    2. Then you need fonts.

    Remember the firefox problem we have discussed only renders font badly but it doesn’t display boxes with numbers.So most probably you dont have fonts installed correctly. Ubuntu Wiki has a detailed font install page.

  10. Rizwan Says:
    March 29th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

    there is a link, hope it will be useful:
    http://www.blacksapphire.com/firefox-rtl/

    Rizwan

  11. Sultan Rahi Says:
    April 25th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    Well, there’s also a conflict between Urdu and Pashto rendering (look at Urdu Wikipedia then Pashto Wikipedia and you will understand what I am talking about). I solved this problem in Firefox by changing the font for Arabic to Lateef (you can found it in synaptic I think or on the SIL website (sil.org). But, you will say, it still not solve the problem. Yes, you have to say, that ‘you don’t let the page to choose their own font instead of these ones’ (sorry if the translation is incorrect, I’m not using firefox in English).
    As far as I can see, I don’t need “MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1″ or “MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0″ anymore (well, didn’t install Tahoma though, so maybe it’s necessary for these particular pages).

  12. atanu Says:
    May 12th, 2007 at 6:57 pm

    Came here while looking into language and font rendering issues in linux. Also make sure you add a language entry for urdu from kde control panel -> regional settings – country and language. For example, i read pages in bangla, and i have bangla added first and english as the second. The /etc/environment should also reflect the choice of languages. Mine reads:
    PATH=”/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11
    :/usr/games”
    LANG=”bn_BD.UTF-8″
    LANGUAGE=”bn_BD:bn:en_IN:en_GB:en”

    both firefox and konqueror now render bengali beautifully, which it never did in XP. And of course make sure that you have all the language packs installed of course.

  13. نعمان Ú©ÛŒ ڈائری - » ابنٹو کا نیا نسخہ Says:
    October 27th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

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  14. asim Says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 11:34 am

    i want linux cd form free what can i do

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