Mozilla 1.6 and Firefox 0.8, based off 1.6 fix the bug that broke freetype2 printing. If I understand correctly, in order for Freetype2 printing to work (which is much better for non-latin charsets), the --enable-freetype2 flag needs to be passed. Please fix the ebuilds to enable freetype2 in these mozilla versions. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
I've just finished compiling and configuring a hand-tweaked e-build (replacing --disable-freetype2 by `use_enable truetype freetype2`). It works (unlike standard printing) for non-latin character sets. This was done with firefox, but should apply equally well to seamonkey. Configuring it turned out somewhat tricky. Therefore, the ebuild should have a pointer to this page, so that people can enable Freetype2 printing without too much trouble (and know it's available): http://www.mozilla.org/projects/fonts/unix/enabling_truetype.html Note: the "fonts.directory.truetype.*" won't show up in about:config by default. You need to manually add the pref (right-click, New->String). This HOWTO doesn't mention the pref "font.FreeType2.printing", which, however, defaults to "true", as necessary. Test out the newly configured capabilities, say, from here: http://yandex.ru Print to file and view it. The fonts should look like they do in Mozilla. The first time you print, mozilla dumps the list of fonts it finds to the terminal from which it's running. That's another indication everything is set up correctly. See this URL for a brief discussion of freetype2 (and other kinds of) printing. http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.6/known-issues-int.html
Is this going to break things for people who don't care about non-latin printing? Is it going to take extra configuration for them? It looks like mozilla is now building its own binaries with freetype2 enabled, does that mean it's safe for us to do too?
I haven't noticed any bad effects for latin-only printing (which is mostly what I do anyway). In fact, it only got better, since it now uses the right fonts.
This bug still applies to mozilla 1.7, and firefox 0.9.x. There are no known negative consequences from enabling freetype printing. You actually get correct fonts in printouts, which is a bonus no matter which language you print in. Quoting the aforementioned page: *** The default Linux binary now comes with freetype2 printing enabled. This dramatically enhances the printing result of documents with characters outside Latin-1 repertoire. (Cyrillic, Greek, CJK) In addition, the families and styles of fonts in the print output can more closely follow what you see on the screen rendering with this.method than is possible with the normal mode. *** It's safe to enable this option because the bug (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219060) that made it unsafe in the past has been fixed. The only quirk, according to that same page is: *** Note that PostScript files generated in this mode have to be filtered through Ghostscript even if you have a PS printer. *** This isn't a big deal for Gentoo, since printing happens through CUPS anyway. If you're writing directly to the printer, it's easy enough to pipe the file through "fixps -f" (which just filters the file through gs). If you are still feeling skeptical, you could add a special use flag like "freetype2-printing". However, I use my ebuild with the following one-line change: --- /portage/available/net-www/mozilla-firefox/mozilla-firefox-0.9.1.ebuild 2004-07-04 22:10:50.000000000 -0400 +++ /portage/installed/net-www/mozilla-firefox-0.9.1/mozilla-firefox-0.9.1.ebuild 2004-07-08 02:57:03.000000000 -0400 @@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ # Xft1.1 *and* Xft2.0, and segfault... if [[ ${pango_version//.} -gt 10 ]]; then einfo "Building with Xft2.0 (Gtk+-2.0) support!" - myconf="${myconf} --enable-xft --disable-freetype2" + myconf="${myconf} --enable-xft $(use_enable truetype freetype2)" touch ${WORKDIR}/.xft else ewarn "Building without Xft2.0 support!"
mozconfig.eclass currently contains: mozconfig_use_enable truetype freetype2 mozconfig_use_enable truetype freetypetest so I think this bug is resolved.