On Wed, 2008-07-23 at 10:53 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > Hi all, > > We have several issues posing the problem of dual OTF/TTF fonts > packaging. > http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=456345 > http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=455995 > > Till now we've managed to avoid this issue, however it seems we can't > escape Fedora guidelines on the subject anymore. > > Anyway, my feeling right now (I've not thought a lot on it) is: > > 1. the immense majority of apps do not access font files directly, > they all use fontconfig (or should use fontconfig someday) > > 2. I don't know what algorithm fontconfig uses to choose between > several formats of the same fonts, or even if its choices are stable. > But whatever it is I think apps will only see one version of the fonts > (or even one format for a face and another for other faces). So > installing two formats on-disk is likely to be a waste of bandwidth > and storage, and a source of subtle application bugs. It uses the version number to prefer one over the other. If both have the same version, it may not be deterministic, not sure. > 3. That being said, the right solution would seem to be obvious. Just > use TTF only for quadratic fonts, and OTF only for cubic fonts. Long > term most fonts will probably be OTF only (given it's a little better > than TTF for new fonts). No, right solution is OTF for all. > 4. Unfortunately, Java and OO.o have lots of problems with OpenType > CFF fonts > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Known_fonts_and_text_bugs > (please comment and vote on the relevant issues to put some pressure > on upstream) > So shipping only OTF versions is likely not to go well with OO.o users Then lets fix OO.o and Java (we have a Free java now). Don't hold back the OTF transition. There's a reason that OTF is backward compatible. Or do you mean "OpenType CFF" when you say OTF? > 5. But not shipping them will annoy other classes of users (TEX users, > etc) "TrueType OTF" makes everyone happy, doesn't it? > 6. So I guess we probably need to do something like this: > - fonts available in TTF and OTF formats have foo-fonts-ttf and > foo-fonts-otf subpackages (no base package), unless one format is > obviously more complete (more recent version with more fixes or > coverage), in which case we only package this version without > subpackaging. > - the ttf subpackage is only provided if the format is supported > upstream (no conversion on our side if upstream does not QA it) > - if the font was mono-format before, foo-fonts-ttf obsoletes all the > foo-fonts packages till the last known version (but no later) > - the two packages own their subdirs if they share them and conflict > with each other > - when has OO.o fixed its bugs, we make foo-fonts-otf the new > foo-fonts package, obsoleting all previous foo-fonts-otf and > foo-fonts-ttf packages For god's sake no. Keep it simple. > 7. for projects that use different font names for both formats (but > functionally equivalent, since they are created from the same sfds), > change them for both fonts export the same family name (with > fontconfig aliasing of the upstream name) and use the same rules as > before. An example would be Old Standards. > > Thoughts? > -- behdad http://behdad.org/ "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 _______________________________________________ Fontconfig mailing list Fontconfig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/fontconfig
