2009/11/25 Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot@xxxxxxxxxxx>: > 5. The real users of this stuff never contributed a bit to this > maintenance, avoid answering questions when people ask something about > it, refused to write packaging guidelines to help others do this work > for them when (repeatedly) invited to, and react in a very hostile > manner when they get a single mail asking them to make some effort to > stop using this stuff (either patching it out, convincing their upstream > to do this change, or finding another non-core-fonts-using alternative > to package in Fedora, there are many possible solutions). They were > *not* asked to help cleaning up the font packages themselves, because, > after all this years of no action, it's pretty clear none of them want > to. I never intended to direct any hostility at you, Matěj, or any other person. I apologize for giving such an impression. I *did* intend to direct hostility at the script that mails out the nag messages. :-) But my reaction wasn't just to a single email. I have felt the noose tightening around my neck for some time now. I have posted to this list before about my woes as a package maintainer, and so to be nagged about what I have already described as the limitations I am forced to work within upset me. I think both of us feel backed into a corner we don't want to be in. That's bad, because people tend to become aggressively defensive in such situations. I've just dunked my head in a bucket of cold water to cool myself off, so let me try to give a dispassionate account of where I'm standing. Perhaps if we understand each other's positions better, we can find some way to get what we both want. For most of my upstreams, dropping to a single fallback core font is actually okay, because they are only using fonts at all to pop up an X window showing what they would otherwise display on the console. A single fixed-width font meets that need. My big problem is with XEmacs. It uses a variety of core fonts for different parts of its display. The display engine itself is very old code that no current developer understands thoroughly. An effort was made a few years ago to port our code to fontconfig + Xft. It worked just well enough that some people want it turned on by default, but it actually still has numerous problems (e.g., what the Release Manager calls "display turds", where a few pixels remain after a character is supposedly erased). Meanwhile, the developers who started that effort went on to other things and left the code in its unfinished state. No current XEmacs developer really has a good handle on that code, or what needs to be done to finish it. Therefore, I feel forced to continue building XEmacs in Fedora with the old core font code. The options I have been offered are, as I understand it, to: 1. Step up to help out with the maintenance of the core fonts. I don't know anything about any font system, legacy or modern, and precious little about X. I don't have even the faintest glimmer of a clue about how to start doing this. 2. Nag my upstream to fix their application. Well, I AM upstream, and no current developer knows how to finish this project. We would gladly accept help. 3. Fix the application myself. I don't know how to do this. My expertise lies in low-level systems work. I don't know much of anything about GUIs in general. 4. Orphan the package. As an upstream developer, this is my baby we're talking about. I would be VERY unhappy if XEmacs were to be dropped from Fedora. (Not that I expect anyone else to be concerned about my happiness; I'm just saying that I'm not very willing to do this.) I don't have a good option here. Given sufficient time, I believe we can stumble our way to a working fontconfig + Xft setup, and then it won't be a problem, but right now I can't really do anything about the situation. How long do we have before the core font packages are removed from Fedora? A month? A year? Two years? > In other words, they collectively expect someone else to do the ugly, > boring, and time-consuming work on the stuff they use, and BTW this > someone else should shut up about it and not remind them they behave > like parasites (let's call things by their real name). I believe that you just described what every package user expects of a package maintainer. That doesn't warrant calling the package users "parasites". -- Jerry James http://www.jamezone.org/ -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
