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Problems reading & writing unicode Bangla (Bengali) in Firefox 6

Kausik Datta
Kausik Datta
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Every time Firefox is updated, something breaks. This forum and the Mozillazine forum are replete with complaints about Firefox ceasing to display properly unicode fonts of different foreign languages. Version 5 was doing fine. Again, in FF6 the display of unicode Bangla (Bengali, language of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal) has become corrupted. Vowel glyphs appear inappropriately after consonant glyphs, concatenations are inappropriately broken down. This is happening with the text on Tabs, and in websites (such as Facebook) that display Bangla just fine in other browsers such as IE, Chrome or Safari. This has considerably diminished my Firefox experience, since in order to see the Bangla script properly, I need to open another browser.

Every time Firefox is updated, something breaks. This forum and the Mozillazine forum are replete with complaints about Firefox ceasing to display properly unicode fonts of different foreign languages. Version 5 was doing fine. Again, in FF6 the display of unicode Bangla (Bengali, language of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal) has become corrupted. Vowel glyphs appear inappropriately after consonant glyphs, concatenations are inappropriately broken down. This is happening with the text on Tabs, and in websites (such as Facebook) that display Bangla just fine in other browsers such as IE, Chrome or Safari. This has considerably diminished my Firefox experience, since in order to see the Bangla script properly, I need to open another browser.

All Replies (4)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Try to install the Kalpurush.ttf font

Kausik Datta
Kausik Datta Mwenye swali
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Cor-el, thank you for your reply. The exact same solution was given to me by a user from Bangladesh in another forum. I immediately did that, downloaded Kalpurush from Omicronlab (I am a long time Avro user) and installed it. I also changed the font setting to Kalpurush as the default font in Bangla.

I thought the problem was resolved. But this morning I found that I was wrong; the problem remained. I typed in some words in Bangla in Facebook, and the e-kaar, i-kaar, juktaakkhor etc. were all messed up as before in FF6, but I could see them fine in IE and Chrome.

I don't mind confessing that I was very disappointed.

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Try to toggle some Boolean gfx.font_rendering prefs on the about:config page to disable some features and maybe set gfx.direct2d.disabled -> true to disable Direct2D.
Filter: gfx

To open the about:config page, type about:config in the location (address) bar and press the "Enter" key, just like you type the url of a website to open a website.
If you see a warning then you can confirm that you want to access that page.

  • Use the Filter bar at to top of the about:config page to locate a preference more easily.
  • Preferences that have been modified show as bold(user set).
  • Preferences can be reset to the default or changed via the right-click context menu.
Kausik Datta
Kausik Datta Mwenye swali
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Yay! With a little encouragement from you, Cor-el, I dove into about:config. As I discovered, it had nothing to do with the graphics as such. I applied a filter 'beng', and realized the problem immediately. Despite my having set all the font options as 'Kalpurush' via the Tools>Options>Content, it didn't hold in the configuration. I had to manually change a bunch of config options (such as font.name.monospace.x-beng; font.name.sans-serif.x-beng; and font.name.serif.x-beng) to Kalpurush, as well as add Kalpurush to the font.name-list options. Now it displays the Bangla fonts perfectly.

Two additional things about this:

  1. Although I changed the config options in about:config, another option needs to be set via Tools>Options>Content>Advanced, to allow webpages to set their own fonts (Check the Box). Otherwise, the display of English fonts becomes weird, because it starts pulling the English glyphs from the Bangla fonts.
  2. FWIW, this problem occurs only in XP. It doesn't occur in Vista or in Windows 7.

Modified by NoahSUMO