Re: New font packaging guidelines

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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 03:08:21PM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le lundi 22 décembre 2008 à 14:56 +0200, Sarantis Paskalis a écrit :
> > On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 05:13:35PM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> 
> Hi Sarantis,
> 
> > > As some of you may know, after more than a month of consultation,
> > > feedback and tweaking new font packaging guidelines have been approved
> > > by FESCO.
> 
> > Two of my packages are TeX fonts (tetex-font-kerkis and 
> > tetex-font-cm-lgc), which contain .pfb files (postscript type 1 from 
> > what I could find out).
> 
> We've known for quite a	while TEX had a problem with fonts installation
> and licensing. However repoquery unearthed many non-font packages that
> shipped fonts (not only TEX packages, and a lot more than I
> expected :(), so I'm going to write a general answer if you permit.
> 
> 1. The target font management stack on Fedora is fontconfig. It has
> “near universal” support including emacs-side¹.
> 
> 2. If your app is fontconfig-aware you just need to package the fonts it
> needs as a normal guidelines-compliant font package. Fontconfig will
> then locate them for your app no matter on how the font files are named
> or renamed. 
> 
> 3. If your app is not fontconfig-aware, you should politely remind your
> upstream it has a problem.
> 
> 4. If your app is not fontconfig-aware, and there is no solution
> upstream in the short term, you still need to package the fonts using
> the normal Fedora fonts packaging guidelines. And then either patch your
> app to look for its fonts in the guidelines-compliant location or
> package a set of symlinks pointing to this location.
> 
> 5. The preferred way to package fonts is to locate their original font
> upstream and package the original font release in a separate fonts-only
> package.
> 
> 6. However, for fonts that are bundled in a software package with no
> other form of release, or fonts which have some additional non-standard
> stuff bundled with them (such as TEX packages), I don't think anyone
> will complain too loudly if you package them as subpackage(s) of your
> main package. As long as the subpackage(s) are clean,
> guidelines-compliant, and can be used by Fedora users without dragging
> with them your app or TEX or other non-general-purpose stuff.
> 
> For example, for a “tex-foo” TEX package, you could have:
> 
> tex-foo-fonts-fontname1 (normal font subpackage #1)
> tex-foo-fonts-fontname2 (normal font subpackage #2)
> […]
> tex-foo-fonts-common    (common font subpackage that owns the fonts dirs
>                          and the fonts-licensing files²)
> tex-foo                 (main TEX package that depends on the
>                          tex-foo-fonts packages, includes symlinks to
>                          the font files in standard locations and
>                          other TEX stuff)
> 
> The subpackaging logic is pretty much the same as in the
> spectemplate-fonts-multi.spec template included in fontpackages-devel
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_spec_template_for_multiple_fonts
> 
> Please note that the current guidelines say that font packagers:
> “SHOULD package each font family separately, and avoid font collections
> that mix fonts of different history, licensing, or origin”³
> 
> There is some wiggle room between SHOULD and MUST, and it has posed
> problems in the past six months, so I've pushed the simpler
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Font_package_splitting_rules_(2008-12-21)#New_wording
> FPC-side yesterday.
> 
> I hope that answers all your questions.
> 
> ¹ After a period of “‘utter luddites’ shock” to quote a well-known xorg
> contributor
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.freedesktop.xorg/34322/focus=34334
> 
> ² of course if you're shipping a single font family, that requires a
> single font subpackage, there's no need to separate directory and
> licensing handling in a -common subpackage. Just create a single
> tex-foo-fonts-fontname in that case.
> 
> ³
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Avoid_bundling_of_fonts_in_other_packages

Thanks for the really detailed guidelines.  My packages are just TeX 
fonts (and their TeX related configuration), so my actions boil down to 
moving the actual font files under /usr/share/fonts and symlink them to 
their original directory.

(I also have to rename the package but that is orthogonal to fonts and 
more related to TeX stuff after tetex EOL.)
  
Thanks again,

-- Sarantis

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