Server: User avatar generator issues with font

[jancborchardt]

For the Mail app and the Contacts menu, the generated avatars look great:

Now compare it to the user management and the Files app (here the sharing view).
The typeface is wrong, there are even completely varying thicknesses. Is this a caching issue?

cc @nextcloud/designers

[nextcloud-bot]

GitMate.io thinks possibly related issues are https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/10248 (Introduces avatars for guest users), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/8635 (OCP\Files\NotFoundException related to user's avatar), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/7444 (Quota 0 issues: Avatar and AudioPlayer scan), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/11923 (Users layout), and https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/3482 (Issue with documents).

[skjnldsv]

@jancborchardt have you enabled imagick?

[MorrisJobke]

@jancborchardt have you enabled imagick?

Could we add some checks to the admin page about this. Just to make it easier for admins to spot ;)

[rullzer]

@jancborchardt did you generate some users before the switch of font and some after?

We generate the image of the avatar server side. So that all the clients can always obtain an image.

[jancborchardt]

@rullzer all users were created before the font switch.

Just created a new one (2nd entry in screenshot) but the font is still wrong:

@jancborchardt have you enabled imagick?

@skjnldsv not sure, how do I check? But really since it works for the Mail app and the Contacts menu, shouldn’t it work in Files and Users too?

[skjnldsv]

@jancborchardt it depends on the source of the avatars.

1. are those images or javascript generated?
2. we generate multiple avatar sizes when requested, so if we requested the 44px before the font update, and then you load the mail app that request 32px after the fonts change, it will be different
3. The avatar are generated with the gd library (php) which is an impossible way to work with. For cleaner avatars you need imagick. You can check with a php file and phpinfo to check if you have it
   Create a phpinfo.php file at the root of your nextcloud, edit it and put inside
   <?php phpinfo();
   Then go to your cloud.com/phpinfo.php and see if you have imagick

Nonetheless, you can also delete the avatar cache and scan the app-data folder with occ to reset everything :)
@rullzer we should probably create a command for that? Or add it into the repair one?

[MorrisJobke]

@rullzer we should probably create a command for that? Or add it into the repair one?

:+1:

We also should do step 3 automatically and add it to the setup warnings page. 😉

[rullzer]

Of course we should only kill generated avatars ;) Not all avatars.

[jancborchardt]

Whatever we do, let’s make it so that it automatically fixes the avatars for everyone upgrading to Nextcloud 15, does that work? Cause people shouldn’t need to check the setup page and run a command to fix typography in the avatars. :wink:

[rullzer]

@jancborchardt it is not about NC15 it is about if you have imagemagic or not

[jancborchardt]

Aaah ok – so what you are saying is:

• We need ImageMagick cause we need to give the avatar pngs to our apps/clients too
• Contacts and Mail don’t use ImageMagick, because they don’t need to give their avatars to any clients
• I don’t have ImageMagick installed so the avatars generated by Contacts and Mail will always look great cause they are HTML+CSS and use the font, while the ones from user management will always look bad cause I don’t have ImageMagick and thus it doesn’t load the Nunito font?

Is that correct? :D

[skjnldsv]

yes basically :)
But you don't need imagick, the gd library will also work, we cannot afford to NOT have generated avatars. But they look less nice :)

You don't need imagick, but it's highly recommended if you want nice avatars :)
See https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/9197

[skjnldsv]

fix in https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/12313