Name: gm110360 Date: 08/05/2003


FULL PRODUCT VERSION :
java version "1.4.2-beta"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2-beta-b19)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2-beta-b19, mixed mode)

FULL OS VERSION :
Linux hobes.tommysvensson.net 2.4.21-0.13mdk #1 Fri Mar 14 15:08:06 EST 2003 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

The system is a Mandrake 9.1, which is not entirely clear from the "uname -a" above.

EXTRA RELEVANT SYSTEM CONFIGURATION :
Nvidia Geforce 4 graphics card.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
All fonts but Lucida sans typewriter have a height that is almost twice the font size. The actual rendered text is the correct size, but contains almost as much empty space above it as the font is high making everything seem doublespaced. This makes menus, tabs, etc extremely large. When using Netbeans, fullscreen window on a 1920x1440 screen I got about 60 lines in the editor!! The same problem also exists in 1.4.1_01 and 1.4.1, and I had it before with 1.3 also.

I suspect that there is something wrong with the actual fonts under j2sdk1.4.2/jre/lib/fonts. As a test I downloaded IBMs IBMJava2-14. IBMs jdk did not suffer from the font problem. It is however not fast or stable enough to be used, but as a second test I copied the font.properties and the fonts catalog from IBMJava2-14/jre/lib to j2sdk/jre/lib replacing the files, and then the font problem was gone! I now get 83 lines in the NetBeans editor, and menus, etc looks OK.

So I draw the conclusion it is the fonts that are bad in your jdk.

I also want to add the before copying the IBM fonts, when I set the "Lucida Sans Typewriter" font for the java editor in NetBeans I got a correct looking font in the editor window, but the rest of the IDE for which I cannot change font were still using up an awful lot of space due to high fonts. So the "Lucida Sans Typewriter" font seems to be OK, while the rest are not.

One more thing that makes this even more complex is that this problem existed in Mandrake 7.x, but dissappeared in 8.x, and 9.0, but came back in 9.1. So the problem is also affected by the Linux system. Back when I ran Mandrake 7.x and jdk 1.3 I used IBMs jdk since it did not have the problem och yours and IBMs jdk were about the same. So IBMs jdk has never had this font problem while your fonts are affected by something in the system.

So your jdk have had this problem since 1.3. I had no problems with jdk 1.2. In the "Release last known to work" below I have selected 1.3 since there is no correct choice that I can give. The correct value is "Java 2 JDK, Standard Edition, v 1.2".

I consider this bug quite severe since a lot of application does not let you choose the font they use in the gui. When running an application like Poseidon4UML for example all the diagrams were really distorted due to the font bug and there were noting you could do about it!

STEPS TO FOLLOW TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM :
Install the jdk and run any gui application on a Mandrake 9.1 system.

REPRODUCIBILITY :
This bug can be reproduced always.

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
Copy the fonts from the IBM jdk.
(Incident Review ID: 186457)
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