Ubuntu – Unreadable font on Gmail since recent updates in Chromium

fontsgmailunreadable

Since recent updates in the past two or three days, many of my incoming emails have become unreadable in Gmail.

Specifically:

  • This happens only in Chromium (in Gmail). If I open the affected emails in Firefox Gmail, I can read them OK.
  • If I change the zoom, whether larger or smaller, I can read the email. But at 100%, I cannot.
  • The problem started only a couple of days ago (yesterday, I think).
  • Not all emails have this problem. I don't know what separates those that do from those that don't.
  • The emails render perfectly on both Windows 7 (Chrome) and Lubuntu 14.04 (Chromium).

See the screen-shots:

100% (parts of letters, and entire letters, are missing):

Zoom 100%

90% (readable, though not entirely clear):

Zoom 90%

110% (also readable, though not entirely clear):

Zoom 110%

The letters are crystal clear on both Windows and Lubuntu.

Presumably, it is something to do with the fonts. But I don't know even where to begin fixing this readability problem.

Please help.

  • I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit, fully updated

Best Answer

I had a similar issue with Google Chrome and Outlook.com (I know different site & slightly different browser, but the code should help). Adding this code to ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf (it may need to be created) fixed the issue for me:

<match target="font" >
    <edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
        <bool>false</bool>
    </edit>
</match>

This isn't original with me, but I cannot remember where I found the answer as it's been awhile (I just copied my file to here). All I remember is that my searches had to do with Calibri. Hope this helps.

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