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Italic formatting doesn't work on Hebrew text when viewed in Google Chrome on an Android mobile device
Closed, ResolvedPublicBUG REPORT

Description

Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

  • Use an android device, and a Chrome browser, to open any wikipedia page in edit mode
  • Copy the following text into the edit window: אבג ''אבג'' אבג (these are the first three letters in Hebrew, repeated three times, where the middle occurence is wrapped in two sets of single quotes – the wiki markup for italic text)
  • Move on to preview the edit (no need to actually publish it).

What happens?:

All three repetitions of the letters look the same.

What should have happened instead?:

The middle occurence should have looked "tilted" (italic formatting).

Software version (on Special:Version page; skip for WMF-hosted wikis like Wikipedia):

Other information (browser name/version, screenshots, etc.):

The issue is seen on Android (Samsung) devices using Google Chrome, both in "mobile view" and in "desktop view".
Issue NOT seen when using the Samsung Internet browser, or when using Chrome on an iPhone device (that is, in these cases, the middle word correctly looks italic).
The problem is only with Hebrew letters; English letters and punctuation marks look okay.
The problem was seen both in enwiki and hewiki.
The same issue exists in edit summaries containing Hebrew text: the entire summary is supposed to be formatted in italic, but the Hebrew text (which may be the entire summary text) is not italicized. Example edit summary (here you don't have both italic and non-italic texts side by side for comparison, so I'll just let you know that in Hebrew italic letters, there are no vertical lines; if you see many vertical lines in the edit summary letters, then you see the issue. Notice how the colon *is* tilted.)
Edit: forgot to mention earlier: first reported on hewiki on Sep. 8th 2025. Prior to that (or a little before), it worked fine.

Event Timeline

E_L_Y updated the task description. (Show Details)

This mostly sounds like Chrome is not finding the appropriate Hewbrew italic font in the Android system installation. It certainly wouldn't be anything MediaWiki is responsible for or causing.

Thanks @Izno!
See my edit at the bottom of the task description.
Could it be that there has been some change in the MediaWiki font settings around that time?
Or is it more probable that the change took place in Chrome?
Is there any way to check?
Thanks again!

Hi, just to let you know: it seems like the issue has been resolved... it was probably never related to MediaWiki, as @Izno stated above, so I wasn'y sure if this report should be marked as "resolved" or if it should be completely deleted.
Currently marking as "resolved"; feel free to do with it whatever you see fit.
Thanks!