My Ubuntu Blog

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?

Firefox is great but since I visit several websites that Firefox is unable to render properly I have no choice but to find an alternative. I am starting to hate Firefox and forcing myself to love Konqueror and Galeon but still whenever I am using Firefox I feel like using a familiar application. Like when I want to create bookmark folders or search the web I know how to do it in Firefox quickly. I am still unable to get full control on either Konqueror or Galeon.

Galeon renders pages just as good as Firefox. But I don’t like its simplistic approach. I can not customize it as much as I can do with Firefox and Konqueror. So the main competition is between Firefox and Konqueror.

There are many features in Firefox that I miss in Konqueror:

• Konqueror is not among the Gmail supported browsers. Many web applications such as writely, gmail and others (that I haven’t discovered yet) do not work with Konqueror. It has a ‘change browser identification’ feature which changes the browser identity to anything you want. Like mozilla, Internet explorer, etc. I tried this feature with Gmail, the default CSS view loaded but page didn’t appear as it does in Firefox. mail snippets were running over timestamps and it didn’t look pretty.
• In Firefox I place items on the file menu bar I can not do this in Konqueror.
• Ctrl+F opens a find utility in both browsers. Firefox opens it at the bottom above the status bar which I find more usable than Konqueror’s popup.

Features where Konqueror beats Firefox:

• I thught that Firefox has made it incredibly easy to search the web but Konqueror has amazed me with its built in search shortcuts. One can extend firefox by installing extensions and adding search engines but Konqueror is clearly way a head.
• Though I can not place items on the file menu but Konqueror makes it easy to hide the file menu and then display it again.
• Clicking on feed icon in the status bar adds the feed for the page to Akregator default KDE news aggregator. I find it more usable than firefox’s live bookmarks. What I don’t like in both browsers is that they do not show the feed URL in a way so that a user can copy the url and paste it somewhere else manually.

A web browser is perhaps the most crucial software that an end user wants. If I am going to use Konqueror then it would be better for me to use Kubuntu since it integrates well into KDE. But what about the cool web 2.0 applications? I don’t want to miss anything so I just want to stay on the safe side. I am quite confused in this situation.

The only thing which is troubling me with Dapper is some bug with Firefox and Thunderbird. I check many Urdu websites each day, particularly blogs and BBC Urdu. There are two most popular Urdu fonts Nafees Web Naskh and Urdu Naskh Asiatype. Unfortunately Firefox, Thunderbird and Epiphany are unable to display these fonts. Instead pages are displayed first in sans-serif and after installing Tahoma, pages start appearing in Tahoma.

I tried my best to resolve this issue but nothing worked out. I filed a bug report and a support request (both unanswered till yet). If any one of you is facing this bug please add your comments on either my bug report or support request.

Konqueror and Galeon are two browsers that render web pages properly. Konqueror is just too advance for me. I liked Galeon which is simple and good. I still have to figure out some way to use alternate application for mail and news reader.

The Dapper Drake CDs, that I ordered via Shipit nearly a month ago, arrived yesterday. I have successfully installed Ubuntu Dapper Drake. I am not going to write a lengthy review yet. I would just point out the things that I have noticed.

• Installation was quicker than Breezy, the previous version of Ubuntu.
• System start up time has improved significantly.
• Default icons, theme and windows are beautiful.
• My system is running a bit slower than Breezy.

I am quite excited about Dapper Drake, the new version of Ubuntu. I haven’t installed it yet. With a Dial up connection it is quite difficult to download it. Secondly, I have no idea how to burn a disk image. I will wait till the Free CD arrives which usually does not take more than a few weeks.

I am not sure what differences I would see. But reading the reviews and announcements I figured the following:

• It uses Gnome 2.14, I am currently using Gnome 2.12 on Breezy.
• It has newer versions of Open Office and many other software.
• Installing PHP, Apache and mysql (LAMP) has been made simpler.
• Improved video playback support.
• Faster system startup and login.

Steven reviews Dapper on Linux Watch, links to more reviews available at distrowatch.

Tags: ubuntu, linux, dapper