Font issues with non [a-zA-Z] characters

[zertrin]

As can be seen on the screenshot below, selfoss has some problems rendering diacritics or "special" characters in sources' titles.

For example : çéèêüß cause the problem... (I haven't tested all of the possibilities, but this seems rather generic about non [a-zA-Z] characters.
The font of the word containing such a character falls back to the default one of the browser, beginning with the faulty character and gets back to selfoss normal font with the beginning of the next word, until another problematic character appear.

Moreover the apostrophe sign is rendered with its escaped HTML equivalent: ’

Viele Grüße aus München

[zertrin]

I'd like to add that this misbehavior is also observed in the content of the articles too:

[SSilence]

Which browser do you use? In chrome I don't have the issue with the font.

Does the problem with the ’ only occur in tumblr? It seems they send it with escaped & (’).

Regards
Tobi

[zertrin]

I'm using Opera 12.14 (latest version).

You're right, the ' problem occurs only with tumblr feeds. However I just noticed that it doesn't happen for each and every '

[xavez]

Is it a good idea to have a custom font for the content anyway? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to use either Georgia or Helvetica for a feed reader? They contain all the necessary characters, look great on any screen and don’t interfere with the reading experience.

In most cases I would be inclined to say that using a custom font is a great idea, but in a web RSS reader I would really try to keep the typography as “native” as possible.

I did some tweaks to the CSS on my installation and I much prefer this reading experience:

[zertrin]

I agree with @xavez, especially when the "new" Web font techniques seem not yet perfectly integrated in every common browser.

At least, I'd like to see what you did tweak to get to your reading experience.

[xavez]

@zertrin not a whole lot, but it does the trick for me:

• Removed the 3-columns layout, because reading in columns on a screen is annoying: scrolling up and down to read columns of text is definitely no typography best practice (and the web is not a print magazine :))
• Removed the striped background pattern (noisy)
• Changed the font-face to Georgia (personal preference, Helvetica would do great as well)
• Changed the text color to a light shade of black for easy-on-the-eyes contrast (#404040)
• Changed the font-size to be big enough (125%)
• Added a max-width to the .entry-content so it is a pleasurable reding length (38em)

I think the interface can use some love in general but hey, let’s start with the basics :)

[SSilence]

Does the problem still exists with the current master version? The fonts was updated in one of the last commits.

[zertrin]

I just checked out the latest github version :

commit 4c2ee6728d55c286bea3786c6786c3b9d72de03d
Author: Tobias Zeising <tobi....de>
Date:   Fri Mar 29 13:32:05 2013 +0100

The problem changed somewhat but is still not really solved... see screenshot below :

EDIT: Still using latest version of "stable" Opera (12.14). Note that this does not occur in Google Chrome...

[SSilence]

I will add a new option for using the system sans font.

[armandabric]

I agree with the @xavez suggestions. This enchantment can increase a lot the UI and the readability of the content.

[SSilence]

I have added a new parameter use_system_font. Setting this to 1 will remove the fonts.css and your default font (Arial) will be used.