Bug#401533: iceape-browser: MATHML problems, especially printing

[Mike Hommey]

On Mon, Dec 04, 2006 at 02:30:48PM +0100, Jan Willem Stumpel <jstumpel at planet.nl> wrote:
> Mike Hommey wrote:
> 
> > Both the XFT and the pango backends have their own problems
> > with mathml. Hopefully, that will be fixed with Gecko 1.9...
> 
> I suppose you are in contact with the upstream people.. did they
> actually say they would fix this in 1.9?
>
> Question: if I go to about:buildconfig, it says freetype2 is
> disabled. Why is this? Does it have any relevance to the mathml
> problem? (Anyway I am just a user, don't know anything about this
> 'backend' stuff..).

Freetype was used a long time ago. Nowadays, helpers libraries around
freetype, such as xft or pango are used. In mozilla products case, both
can be used by selecting a specific backend at runtime or buildtime.
That is done by setting MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO to disable the pango backend
and use the XFT backend instead. Both have their own way to handle
mathml, since mathml layout is tied with the backend.

On Windows, it's another different backend that is used, that is why
mathml support is different there.

In Gecko 1.9, however, it is planned that all platforms will use a new
cairo-based backend, so, hopefully, mathml support will be better. At
least, if they improve it for windows, it will benefit all platforms.

Mike