Compiling Firefox Beta 5 on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon with nicer fonts
The firefox binaries available on Mozilla's site is compiled with a version of cairo that does a different type of subpixel rendering when anti-aliasing than what is used by the Ubuntu Gutsy system - I much prefer the way fonts look in ubuntu on my LCD display. To fix this I had to compile Firefox myself with the enable-system-cairo option. But for this I also needed a more recent version of cairo than what Gutsy provides - which is probably why mozilla decided to include their own version in the binaries.
You will need to get the source and compile the following packages yourself from freetype's download page and cairo's releases page:
- freetype-2.3.5
- pixman-0.10.0
- cairo-1.6.4
with the usual
./configure && make && sudo make installYou might have to install make with the following before you can compile cairo:
sudo apt-get install build-essentialFreetype needs special attention to enable LCD sub-pixel rendering because of these patent issues. So uncomment define FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING in devel/ftoption.h to enable it.
It is not really necessary to recompile freetype, I just included it to play around with it - and the new cairo is just so that firefox will compile. You can delete the new libraries (by default in /usr/local/lib) after firefox is compiled with system cairo. Then everything should be back to using the default font settings as set in the gutsy preferences. Or so I am guessing, works for me ;)
Now to compile Firefox:
Create a ~/.mozconfig file as described here.
This is mine:
. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/ff-opt
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-libxul
ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo Make sure you have all the build prerequisites. I had to install the following packages:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libdbus-glib-1-dev
sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev
sudo apt-get install libxt-devIf you have everything, start compiling with this command
make -f client.mk buildAfter some time, build a tarball as recommended with:
cd ff-opt
make packageYou will find your new firefox package in the dist/ directory. Unpack somewhere and enjoy ;)
Before shot with Mozilla cairo:
After shot with system cairo:
Quod Libet plugin for Facebook
Still very rough and hackish, but it works ;)
Quod Libet plugin to change your Facebook status message
The quodlibet plugin is just a quick hack of the gajim plugin, the python class is easy to use anywhere...
W850i UTF-8 and ID3v2.4 bug
Arrghh! A unicode/utf/latin-1 confusism again...
Been playing around with my new Sony Ericsson W850 - and so far it's pretty impressive.
But there's a problem with some mp3 ID3 tags which I tracked down to be UTF-8 used in some ID3v2.4 tags. I first thought it choked on the ID3v2.4 tag like so many other crappy players, but it handles ID3v2.4 fine if you convert the encoding to Latin-1 or UTF-16.
ID3v2.3 does not allow UTF-8, which is why it will always work fine. ID3v2.4 adds UTF-8 support, so this is a bug in the phone software. I'm using version R1JG001.
I used eyeD3 to convert the tags, which can also add album art btw.
Edit:
It looks like there's a problem with track numbers as well. UTF-16 works fine, but track numbers are mixed up, so the tracks play out of order. And **don't try UTF-16BE.** Your phone will *reboot repeatedly until you remove those files*. Looks like using either ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4 doesn't matter. So all that is left is Latin-1 encoded tags.
*So if you have problems, make sure you don't use UTF or unicode encoded tags on your mp3s*
I made this rough python script to convert to lower bitrate mp3s and fix the tags to work with the W850i. It will also add any picture named folder.jpg or album.jpg in the same directory as album art to the tag.
http://www.floatinginspace.za.org/w850_cp/cp2w850.html