Liberation Serif no longer metrically compatible to Times New Roman in version 5.3 on Linux

[schulu]

After installing Libreoffice 5.3 on Kubuntu 14.04 via the libreoffice fresh ppa the times new roman from the mscorefonts has changed metrics. It used to be metrically compatible to the liberation serif until 5.2. Now I get different paragraph breaks and even different page breaks in some documents.

The first picture shows Libreoffice 5.3, the second picture shows Libreoffice 5.2. It’s a comparison between liberation serif and times new roman. The metrics are identical in the second picture, but are not identical in the first.

Is that related to the new layout engine introduced in 5.3?

[mikekaganski]

LibreOffice didn’t introduce new layout engine in 5.3 for Linux: in used HarfBuzz since 4.1. However, the work to enable it on other platforms could of course have side effects. Or it could be another reason for the change.

Just wanted to clarify.

[schulu]

Looking at the screenshots again it seems like libreoffice is not reading the kerning information of times new roman anymore (bigger gap between W and e, V and o, etc.). The font shipped in the mscorefonts package is quite old already. Maybe it uses some old feature that libreoffice stoped to support?