[Pkg-chromium-maint] Bug#745037: chromium: recent chromium versions incorrectly prefer fixed fonts if available

[Chris Bainbridge]

Package: chromium
Version: 34.0.1847.116-1~deb7u1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

A recent update of Chromium (versions 33 and 34 ?) makes the fonts look ugly.
It appears that, if a fixed font is available on the system, Chromium now uses
it to render some text instead of the nice variable size fonts.

To reproduce just install fixedsc font from
http://ptspts.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/how-to-enable-bitmap-fonts-on-ubuntu.html
, use "fc-list|grep fix" to verify the font is installed, and then start
chromium

This issue also appears to affect Gentoo, so it may be an upstream issue.

Forum reports of this bug (all recent 2014):

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=113182
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7527078.html
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-984870-postdays-0-postorder-asc-
start-0.html

The screenshot on the Debian forum shows this bug: http://imgur.com/GsbYDIU





-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.4
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages chromium depends on:
ii  chromium-inspector  34.0.1847.116-1~deb7u1
ii  gconf-service       3.2.5-1+build1
ii  libasound2          1.0.25-4
ii  libatk1.0-0         2.4.0-2
ii  libc6               2.13-38+deb7u1
ii  libcairo2           1.12.2-3
ii  libcap2             1:2.22-1.2
ii  libcups2            1.5.3-5+deb7u1
ii  libdbus-1-3         1.6.8-1+deb7u1
ii  libexpat1           2.1.0-1+deb7u1
ii  libfontconfig1      2.9.0-7.1
ii  libfreetype6        2.4.9-1.1
ii  libgcc1             1:4.7.2-5
ii  libgconf-2-4        3.2.5-1+build1
ii  libgcrypt11         1.5.0-5+deb7u1
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0  2.26.1-1
ii  libglib2.0-0        2.33.12+really2.32.4-5
ii  libgnome-keyring0   3.4.1-1
ii  libgtk2.0-0         2.24.10-2
ii  libjpeg8            8d-1
ii  libnspr4            2:4.9.2-1+deb7u1
ii  libnss3             2:3.14.5-1
ii  libpango1.0-0       1.30.0-1
ii  libspeechd2         0.7.1-6.2
ii  libspeex1           1.2~rc1-7
ii  libstdc++6          4.7.2-5
ii  libudev0            175-7.2
ii  libx11-6            2:1.5.0-1+deb7u1
ii  libxcomposite1      1:0.4.3-2
ii  libxdamage1         1:1.1.3-2
ii  libxext6            2:1.3.1-2+deb7u1
ii  libxfixes3          1:5.0-4+deb7u1
ii  libxi6              2:1.6.1-1+deb7u1
ii  libxml2             2.8.0+dfsg1-7+nmu2
ii  libxrender1         1:0.9.7-1+deb7u1
ii  libxslt1.1          1.1.26-14.1
ii  libxss1             1:1.2.2-1
ii  libxtst6            2:1.2.1-1+deb7u1
ii  xdg-utils           1.1.0~rc1+git20111210-6

chromium recommends no packages.

Versions of packages chromium suggests:
pn  chromium-l10n  <none>

-- no debconf information