[Freefont-bugs] FreeMono affected by OS X 10.6 nested character references bug

[j_mach_wust]

Hi

This is not a GNU FreeFont bug, but a Mac OS X 10.6 bug that will  
affect certain characters of GNU FreeFont. Appearently, OS X 10.6 will  
mess up the display of character that use nested references (character  
A references to character B which in turn references to character  C  
which is drawn from scratch).

Two affected characters I've found are "quotedblleft" and  
"quotedblbase" from freefont-ttf-20090104.tar.gz . The character  
"quotedblleft" references to the character "quoteleft" which in turn  
references to the character "quoteright" which is drawn from scratch.  
The character "quotedblbase" references to the character  
"quotesinglebase" which in turn references to the character  
"quoteright" which is drawn from scratch.

For more wordy descriptions and screenshots, see:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11486008#11486008

The buggy OS X 10.6 behaviour can be prevented by replacing the nested  
character references by single references (character A references to  
character B which does not reference to any other character but is  
drawn from scratch). Any nested reference can really be replaced by  
single references.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with the GNU FreeFont nested  
character references. If you would decide to remove the nested  
references in a future release, it would only be as a courtesy to OS X  
users who suffer from Apple's bug. You never know when Apple is going  
to solve the bug.

--
grüess
mach