Q: bundled fonts.

[Alec Leamas]

In a large package (openerp7) I have found some bundled .ttf and .otf 
font files. One of these (Inconsolata) seems to exist in Fedora as 
levien-inconsolata-fonts, the others (see below) I cannot find with a 
quick search.

The fonts are parts of specific addons (a. k. a. plugins). They are 
referenced  with explicit paths in various .css or css/* files.

The entypo-webfont.ttf seems to have a working upstream 
http://www.entypo.com.
I cannot find an upstream for mnmliconsv21-webfont.ttf, hint is that 
it's generated by "Font Squirrel" ?!
There seem to be an upstream for zocial-regular-webfont.ttf, at 
https://github.com/adamstac/zocial, providing a woff file.

Now, what should I do with these? Packaging GL tells me to "avoid" 
bundling ttf/otf files. What's this in this case?

Utterly confused. Any hint, out there?

--alec

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 03:37:03PM +0200, Alec Leamas wrote:
>  In a large package (openerp7) I have found some bundled .ttf and
>  .otf font files. One of these (Inconsolata) seems to exist in Fedora
>  as levien-inconsolata-fonts, the others (see below) I cannot find
>  with a quick search.
>  
>  The fonts are parts of specific addons (a. k. a. plugins). They are
>  referenced  with explicit paths in various .css or css/* files.
>  
>  The entypo-webfont.ttf seems to have a working upstream
>  http://www.entypo.com.
>  I cannot find an upstream for mnmliconsv21-webfont.ttf, hint is that
>  it's generated by "Font Squirrel" ?!
>  There seem to be an upstream for zocial-regular-webfont.ttf, at
>  https://github.com/adamstac/zocial, providing a woff file.
>  
>  Now, what should I do with these? Packaging GL tells me to "avoid"
>  bundling ttf/otf files. What's this in this case?
>  
>  Utterly confused. Any hint, out there? 
We had a similar problem with a package a few weeks ago:

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/packaging/2013-April/009046.html

The first thing to work out: Does simply deleting the font file(s)
make any difference to the documentation / package?  In our case, the
packager could simply delete the file [in %install] and it appeared to
make absolutely no difference to the rendered HTML documentation, thus
problem solved :-)

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines.  Boot with a
live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into KVM guests.
http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v

[Alec Leamas]

On 2013-04-23 16:17, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>  On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 03:37:03PM +0200, Alec Leamas wrote:
> > In a large package (openerp7) I have found some bundled .ttf and
> > .otf font files. One of these (Inconsolata) seems to exist in Fedora
> > as levien-inconsolata-fonts, the others (see below) I cannot find
> > with a quick search.
> >
> > The fonts are parts of specific addons (a. k. a. plugins). They are
> > referenced  with explicit paths in various .css or css/* files.
> >
> > The entypo-webfont.ttf seems to have a working upstream
> > http://www.entypo.com.
> > I cannot find an upstream for mnmliconsv21-webfont.ttf, hint is that
> > it's generated by "Font Squirrel" ?!
> > There seem to be an upstream for zocial-regular-webfont.ttf, at
> > https://github.com/adamstac/zocial, providing a woff file.
> >
> > Now, what should I do with these? Packaging GL tells me to "avoid"
> > bundling ttf/otf files. What's this in this case?
> >
> > Utterly confused. Any hint, out there?
>  We had a similar problem with a package a few weeks ago:
>
>  http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/packaging/2013-April/009046.html
>
>  The first thing to work out: Does simply deleting the font file(s)
>  make any difference to the documentation / package?  In our case, the
>  packager could simply delete the file [in %install] and it appeared to
>  make absolutely no difference to the rendered HTML documentation, thus
>  problem solved :-)
>
>  Rich.
>  
Thanks for reply.... I'm tempted, but here is a test problem. This is 
about real webpages, and to be frank I'm not quite sure how to test 
thoroughly. Just removing feels like it could introduce bugs I will not 
catch. And maintenance would be a problem...

Digging deeper, I find that all references seem to be part of @font-face 
definitions like

@font-face{
...
         src: url('zocial-regular-webfont.eot');
         src: url('zocial-regular-webfont.eot?#iefix') 
format('embedded-opentype'),
                 url('zocial-regular-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
                 url('zocial-regular-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
                 url('zocial-regular-webfont.svg#ZocialRegular') 
format('svg');
...}

So one question would be what happens in such a definition if none of 
the src: elements are found.

But even if it would be possible to use a fallback for some fonts, 
things like entypo-webfont really can't be substituted: it's a symbol 
font with pictograms, not likely to be replaceable. Seems that 
zocial-regular-webfont and mnmlicons are the same kind.

Reading Nicholas's reply to "your" thread I get the impression that the 
browser would download these fonts if they are not installed on the 
machine running to browser. Ergo:
  - At least some fonts are not replaceable
  - The web page must be able to provide the  font to the client if 
requested.

Does  the GL general bundling exception for "javascript intended to be 
served to a web browser" cover this? In that case, this might be solved, 
I guess.

Otherwise, is there any way to avoid the need to package these fonts 
(for those with an upstream) and patch the css paths? The latter part 
seem problematic to me since the complete filesystem isn't really 
available in the webserver context. Or is it? (i. e., can a web 
application for sure use a resource under /usr/share?)

Still confused, but on a higher level.

--alec

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Mar 23 avril 2013 17:55, Alec Leamas a écrit :

>  So one question would be what happens in such a definition if none
> of
>  the src: elements are found. 
The browser will try to display something with its system fonts. If the
missing fonts used standard encoding, it may even work perfectly.
Anyway it's bad practice to provide only src rules in css font rules, src
rules should be a fallback only.

>  But even if it would be possible to use a fallback for some fonts,
>  things like entypo-webfont really can't be substituted: it's a symbol
>  font with pictograms, not likely to be replaceable. 
You'll be surprised at how many symbols have a standardised codepoint in
unicode, and Fedora systems at least ship with huge symbol fonts.

>  Otherwise, is there any way to avoid the need to package these fonts
>  (for those with an upstream) and patch the css paths? The latter part
>  seem problematic to me since the complete filesystem isn't really
>  available in the webserver context. Or is it? (i. e., can a web
>  application for sure use a resource under /usr/share?) 
It can if you configure the web server properly (I don't think selinux
blocks ro /usr/share/fonts access from web servers right now). You can
even alias paths in the web server config (expose a path under a different
name from the filesystem one)

If you can't identify the upstream of a font, Fedora can't ship it in any
form, since you won't have any reliable licensing info that confirm it can
be shipped at all.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Tom Callaway]

On 04/23/2013 09:37 AM, Alec Leamas wrote:
>  In a large package (openerp7) I have found some bundled .ttf and
> .otf
>  font files. One of these (Inconsolata) seems to exist in Fedora as
>  levien-inconsolata-fonts, the others (see below) I cannot find with a
>  quick search.
>  
>  The fonts are parts of specific addons (a. k. a. plugins). They are
>  referenced  with explicit paths in various .css or css/* files.
>  
>  The entypo-webfont.ttf seems to have a working upstream
>  http://www.entypo.com.
>  I cannot find an upstream for mnmliconsv21-webfont.ttf, hint is that
>  it's generated by "Font Squirrel" ?!
>  There seem to be an upstream for zocial-regular-webfont.ttf, at
>  https://github.com/adamstac/zocial, providing a woff file.
>  
>  Now, what should I do with these? Packaging GL tells me to "avoid"
>  bundling ttf/otf files. What's this in this case?
>  
>  Utterly confused. Any hint, out there? 
For fonts that are already packaged, you can Require them, and then make
symlinks (or patch it to the system location).

For unpackaged fonts with a clear independent upstream, they should be
packaged, then see above. ;)

For unpackaged fonts with no clear upstream... I'd check to make sure
you know the license on them first. If the upstream for them is the same
as the source they come with (and you know this for sure, not assume
it), and the license is okay, you can have it go into a fonts subpackage.

Hope that helps,

~tom

==
Fedora Project