New feed items are not printed bold on Linux

I recently switched to Zotero on Windows 10 and Arch Linux. I'm quite happy with the experience so far, but I noticed a small issue.

When using feeds, new items are usually printed bold in my Windows installation. That's quite nice because it helps a lot with keeping track of unread items in high volume feeds.

However under Arch Linux, unread items are not printed in bold. I'm on GNOME 41.4. The issue is independent on session type (X/Wayland) and theming and occurs in both the Release and Beta version of Zotero.

Is someone experiencing the same issue or has any idea how to fix this?
  • Feed items are bold on Ubuntu Linux installs, so it's not a general linux styling issue. I imagine your setup is refusing to render bold fonts for some reason. You should check if bold fonts render in Firefox, and Firefox 68ESR (on which Zotero is based).
  • Thanks! Font issues are painful to debug so knowing that this is not already common knowledge really helped. I will report my findings here for anyone who hits the same issue.

    As it turns out, this issue is caused by the Cantarell Font, which is the default font since Gnome 3.0.
    Cantarell upstream mandates the exclusive use of the variable font in v0.303, and Arch followed that recommendation while Ubuntu (and maybe other distros) still builds the static fonts. Earlier versions of firefox doesn't seem to handle variable fonts particulary well and bold fonts may be indiscernable from regular ones in some cases (https://css-tricks.com/firefoxs-bolder-default-is-a-problem-for-variable-fonts/)
    I switched to Noto Sans and now the issue is resolved :)

    By the way, I was under the impression that Zotero is based on 60.9 ESR? Because this is what ./fetch_xulrunner.sh -p l retrieves when building as described at https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/building_the_standalone_client
  • For me (also on Arch Linux) changing the default Gnome font didn’t have an effect on Zotero. What fixed the issue for me was replacing the "cantarell-fonts" package by installing "cantarell-static-fonts" from AUR. Still the same font, but bold text works now.
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