[Netsurf-develop] Font / Unicode overview
by James Bursa
In an attempt to answer the questions that have appeared recently,
I've written a guide to fonts and Unicode support in NetSurf.
James
______________________________________________________________________
Fonts in NetSurf
NetSurf has support for displaying pages containing Unicode characters
that aren't normally available on RISC OS, for example accented Latin
letters, Greek, Cyrillic, Japanese, and various symbols.
The font choices let you pick a font for each of the five standard
families available to web authors (in CSS). The choices specify the
preferred font to use. If a character is not available in the chosen
font, but it's present in some other font that you have installed,
then NetSurf will automatically use it. There's no need to change the
font choices to view pages with characters that are not available in
the chosen font.
Note that you can only choose a font family. NetSurf will
automatically use weights from the family for bold and slanted text,
if available.
Installing more fonts
The fonts that come with RISC OS cover Latin (Homerton, Trinity,
Corpus), Greek (Sidney), and various symbols (Selwyn, Sidney). (On
RISC OS 3-4, only the "Latin 1" characters from the standard fonts,
which cover Western European languages, can be used by NetSurf).
If you want to display pages with other characters correctly, you'll
need to install fonts containing them. When a character is not present
in any available font, the Unicode character code will be displayed.¹
Any font supplied with a correctly designed "Encoding" file should
work. In practice, native fonts covering anything other than Latin 1
are rare. The solution is to convert TrueType fonts using TTF2f (this
currently produces fonts suitable for RISC OS 5 only).
After installing new fonts, NetSurf will need restarting so that it
detects them.
Problems and unimplemented features
* The default font is always the sans-serif one.
* Printing on RISC OS 5 doesn't work, due to lack of support in the
Font Manager and printer drivers. Printing to Postscript printers on
RISC OS 3-4 is not correctly implemented in NetSurf.
* Substituted characters are taken from the first font that contains
them, even if a character which matches the weight or slant better
is available.
* Only two weights (regular and bold) are supported, even if a family
contains other weights. The algorithm that finds weights needs
improving, for example using the heuristics given in CSS 2.1 15.6.
* Drawfile export is broken.
* Right-to-left text (Hebrew, Arabic) is not implemented.
____________________
¹ If you see the codes 0091, 0092, 0096, or others starting 009, that
indicates that the page is not specifying the character set that it
is using correctly. Installing fonts won't help. We haven't yet
decided what the best way to work around this problem is.
16 years, 8 months
[Netsurf-develop] Links using paths & WinSnap
by Adam
Hi All,
Consider:
<a href="AppNameRes:Help.html">Link</a>
(Where AppNameRes is some path variable.) If I click on this link, NetSurf
presents the file as a download (with type "data") rather than rendering
the file in the browser window. Is this a bug - or am I just missing
something obvious?
I use WinSnap and have nticed that while dragging NetSurf windows around
works as expected, if re-sizing the window does not snap to the top of the
icon bar - is it possible to make this work?
Thanks,
Adam
--
Adam Richardson Carpe Diem
http://www.snowstone.org.uk/riscos/
17 years, 8 months
[Netsurf-develop] Minor problem with sourceforge
by Stefaan Claes
Hello,
Any idea why I get the French webpage if I go to the download page ?
<http://netsurf.sourceforge.net/builds/>
If I use Oregano2 I get the English webpage.
There was one line from sourceforge in the cookies file and I deleted
this line. But I still get the French webpage.
Stefaan
--
Stefaan Claes, Hove, Antwerpen, Belgium, Europe, <sclaes(a)riscosusers.be>
17 years, 11 months
Re: [Netsurf-develop] Secure http for NetSurf?
by John-Mark Bell
Please reply to the list, not me direct, thanks.
On Fri, 23 Sep 2005, cbonsall wrote:
> John-Mark Bell wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 23 Sep 2005, M.I. Abdullah wrote:
> >>
> >>Trying to get to WebMail (run by the university) using NetSurf it is
> >>possible to login due to the lack (?) of secure http (https, SSL, shttp ! ).
> >>Can manage with Oregano and ANT (after loading the SSL module).
> >>
> >>Is there any "secure" http for NetSurf?
> >
> > The full build has had https support for ages. What exactly is the error
> > message (if any) that you get? > John.
>
> I have a similar problem with the NetSurf on an Iyonix. Trying to access
> the University of Edinburgh's staff webmail service results in:
>
> Page error
>
> Sorry, NetSurf was unable to display this page
> SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK. Details:
> error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate
> verify failed
>
> Yet I get access via O2 and FireFox.
NetSurf is very strict about verifying the authenticity of SSL
certificates. If this check fails, it will give an error such as the one
above. You can disable certificate verification by changing the
ssl_verify_certificates option in the Choices file from 1 to 0. (Note that
this really, really, isn't advisable).
John.
17 years, 12 months
[Netsurf-develop] RiscPkg updates failing - too slow
by Simon Smith
I've been trying to update Netsurf via RiscPkg. The data rate is terrible,
and I rarely get more than 100-200k before the transfer closes after 1-3
minutes. Not a pressing issue, but I do wonder if others are seeing the same
problem.
--
Simon Smith
O, varium et mutabile semper alpha.
17 years, 12 months
[Netsurf-develop] Request: Don't Cache file: Objects
by James Sargent
I'd like to request a feature change: local files not to be cached.
I was updating some webpages held locally on my RPC and was puzzled to
see the changes weren't reflected in Netsurf until I eventually twigged
and pressed reload.
Thanks,
James
17 years, 12 months
Re: [Netsurf-develop] Secure http for NetSurf?
by John-Mark Bell
On Mon, 26 Sep 2005, M.I. Abdullah wrote:
> Attached are the login page, the page showing the error and the stderr file
> as you asked. (Sorry I deleted you reply accidentall, hope you have the
> thread of the problem.)
Ok. The issue here is that NetSurf is not sending any cookies for objects
embedded in web pages (this includes frames). Therefore, the left and
right frames of the webmail application are unable to determine that
you're logged in (SquirrelMail makes use of PHP session cookies), hence
the error message you see.
The decision to not send cookies for embedded objects was taken for
privacy reasons. Clearly this has the potential to break web applications
which rely on cookies for state information and also use frames. I'm not
entirely sure what the best solution is in this case so the current
(broken) behaviour will remain until I've had a chance to discuss it with
the other developers.
John.
17 years, 12 months
[Netsurf-develop] Netsurf crashes when using ebay
by Donald
I have asked this question before but received no response.
If I log on to ebay using netsurf it works ok sometimes but at any
critical moment it clears the screen and shuts down netsurf.
Being an inveterate experimenter with thing new I have been downloading,
trying out and using netsurf from the very beginning, long before most of
those who write in now.
I am not a clever person in respect of computers, wholly self taught since
the days of the BBC Micro but I usually manage to sort things out by trial
and error.
What I want to know is: (a) Is this a known problem and should I forget
using netsurf for now on ebay. (b) Does ebay on netsurf work ok for others.
Donald, Isle of South Uist
17 years, 12 months
