(no subject)

[roadrunnertwice]

When I tried Chrome on Mac for the first time, it failed hard when I tried to read my Dreamwidth subscriptions, and since messing with that is just an absolute no-go, I gave up. BSing with Kip tonight got me antsy, though, and I started trying to figure out what was up. I think I finally tracked down the straight dope, albeit in a confused and forum-y form: It looks as though using any sort of professional font manager basically makes Chrome go apeshit. (Sometimes.)

I use (a slightly older version of) Linotype's FontExplorer X; not so much because I'm some big-shot graphic whossit, but because it's actually less confusing than Apple's Font Book for most things. FEX stores added fonts in its own Application Support folder and redirects font requests there in a way I don't entirely understand, and apparently Chrome doesn't understand it either, because whenever it's asked to use a font that exists but isn't stored in /Library/Fonts or ~/Library/Fonts, it'll go all AAAAAAAAA on you. Conversely, if you don't ever visit pages that ask for fonts under external management (or your manager just stores its shit in one of the usual font locations), I think it never complains. Just sucks for me that I went with Candara for my reading page.

Apparently this has to do with the way Chrome sandboxes itself to kingdom come, because messages like this get spat to the console:

1/10/10 Jan 10, 9:39PM sandboxd[27057] Google Chrome He(27058) deny file-read-data /Users/nick/Library/Application Support/FontExplorer X/Font Library/C/Candara/Candara.ttf

Now, I think Chrome's aggressive approach to sandboxing and self-distrust is actually fucking badass, and it's one of the things that's most exciting about the program; between that and separate processes for every tab, they leapfrogged over every existing browser in terms of dealing with the modern web, and everyone else is struggling to catch up. But they've got to fix this shit fast, because barfing mojibake whenever it's used on a machine owned by a graphic designer is maybe not the best way to gain whuffie. (And even though I don't technically need FEX, I'm certainly not going to learn how to use stupid Font Book just to try out a new web browser.)

Comments

[kiplet]

Again, I don't think you've found it yet. I switched to Chrome because conflicts between Firefox and Suitcase were getting out of hand (also, because it was getting way slow). I've got City of Roses tricked out to display in Tribute (the print font) if you happen to have it loaded; Chrome can display just fine, and it can only get at that font through Suitcase. (Firefox insisted on displaying Tribute Roman as Tribute Ligatures, which made for a colorful salad, font-wise.)

No, my issues with Chrome and fonts were much more generic: anything that relied on the browser's generic serif or sans-serif rather than specking a font was turned into Greek. (Not really, but.) This was also starting to happen in Mail. —One of my frustrated poundings on Suitcase seems to have fixed that, though. (I did not take notes.)

But this sandboxing issue might have something to do with the fact that I can't change generic fonts in Chrome. That option's greyed out. I thought it was just a part of the browser Not Ready For Prime Time. It perhaps is, but more fundamentally.

[boopsce.livejournal.com]

What is this whuffie? How does one obtain whuffie? No one can be told what the whuffie is? One has to see it for oneself?