Font CVS Requests
by Paul Lange
Hey,
after my two packages has been approved (thank you Nicolas). I'm going
to start to integrate them into the Fedora CVS system.
Now I have some question for creating the New Package CVS Request:
Who should I put in as owner(s). Is this just me or anything like the
fonts SIG?
Same question for InitialCC. Do I usually put someone in here?
In the documentation is written, that the devel branch is automatically
created. So do I leave this field empty?
Thank you!
Paul
15 years, 2 months
Packaging questions
by Paul Lange
Hey,
I'm currently reading all that packaging stuff and start working on my
first font. I've chosen Tagesschrift from the wishlist, you can find the
webiste here: http://www.yanone.de/typedesign/tagesschrift/
If I don't explain my problems well you can find my current status here:
http://palango.fedorapeople.org/
Well, first some questions to fontconfig. Tagesschrift is a serif font,
but I'm not sure if I should declare its family as serif or fantasy
because it's a kind of distorted. The other thing is the numeral prefix.
I set it to 60 because it's latin but I'm not sure if it's not more a
low priority font (means 61-64). Like to hear your opinion on that two
things.
I'm coming to the .spec file now. Everything is clear until the %setup
-q command. Do I need to make any changes to this because the archive is
a zip rather than a tar.gz archive?
Next section is the %install command. This is really difficult for me.
How can I find out where all this variables (_fontdir,
_fontconfig_templatedir, ...) are pointing to?
That's all for now. Thank you for your help!
Paul
15 years, 2 months
Lost in translation: font policy ambiguous regarding localization groups
by Roozbeh Pournader
Having just renamed two character-rich fonts, I was planning to add
them to relative xxx-support groups when I found that I really don't
know what the fonts policy means there. Quoting from
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:FontsPolicy#Grouping:
* Font packages in a non-legacy format (TTF or OTF): [...]
2. SHOULD also be registered in every applicable xxx-support
localization group:
* except groups that only require glyphs in the basic latin range.
What does "the basic latin range" mean here? Does it mean all the
characters in the Unicode range U+0000..U+007F, which Unicode calls
"Basic Latin", and everybody just calls ASCII? Or does it mean
U+0000..00FF, which according to Unicode is called "Basic
Latin+Latin-1 Supplement"?
Even when I take the extended definiition, looking at the existing
comps file for F11, it seems that the following languages need glyphs
outside that range, and still list not a single font in the
xxx-support localization group. I have listed some of the extra
characters they need too:
* Afrikaans: U+0149
* Bosnian: U+0106, U+010C, U+017D
* Catalan: U+013F, U+0140
* Esperanto: U+0108, U+011C, U+0124
* Finnish: U+0160, U+017D
* French: U+0152, U+0153, U+0178
The list goes on. The source of needed glyphs come from *.orth files
in fontconfig. In fontconfig's source tree, they are in the fc-lang
subdirectory.
I think we really need to reword that part of the policy. We need to
mention how to find the glyphs needed for each language (from
fontconfig? CLDR?), how to find the languages a font supports (is
there a fc-list command line argument?), and redefine (and reword)
"groups that only require glyphs in the basic latin range" to make
sure everyone gets the same meaning from it.
Roozbeh
15 years, 2 months
[Fwd: Re: Needing advice on choosing a font]
by Nicolas Mailhot
Le Jeu 29 janvier 2009 11:32, Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) a écrit :
>
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 9:53 PM, Nicolas Mailhot
> <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net> wrote:
>> http://nowacki.strefa.pl/torunska-e.html
>>
>> It's on the wishlist BTW
>
> That's a really nice way to ask for me to package a new font ^_^
>
> If possible, I'd like to use one already existing in the repositories,
> but thanks for the suggestion in case I don't find one (it is indeed
> really nice)
>
> Any other idea ?
I don't think we currently have heavy serif fonts with an "old"
feeling in the distribution. Most serif fonts tend to be thin (except
for modern serif screen fonts, but they have a modern not oldish
design). You can try asking on the open font library mailing list,
some of the people there know their free/open fonts by heart, but they
are likely to suggest not-packaged fonts too :)
--
Nicolas Mailhot
15 years, 3 months
Fwd: Introduction
by Mathieu Bridon
Sorry, the message was sent only to Nicolas instead of the whole list.
Gmail is killing me -_-
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) <bochecha(a)fedoraproject.org>
Date: Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: Introduction
To: Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net>
>> I found the Fonts SIG over the excellent fedora classroom session
>> provided by Nicolas and now want to help you
>
> Welcome on board. We have a mix of experienced and new packagers in
> the group, so don't hesitate to always ask for help there or on irc if
> you have questions. (if asking publicly is too intimidating you can
> always form a private cabal with other new packagers, it's sometimes
> easier to work with people at the same knowledge level).
And we even have some intermediate packagers who are totally ignorant
of how fonts work, but found themselves having to deal with fonts
packaging against their will (ok, maybe I'm a little exagerating :)
I don't have any problem with publicly asking for help, but I'd love
to join a "cabal" of new font packagers.
By the way, what was this IRC classroom about ? Did it deal with how
to package fonts and "what-is-this-fontconfig-I'm-hearing-about" ? If
yes, are the minutes available ? Is there another one planned ?
Regards,
----------
Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)
French Fedora Ambassador
----------
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
15 years, 3 months
Introduction
by Paul Lange
Hey,
my name is Paul Lange. I finished school in Germany this summer and
currently stay in Chile for learning Spanish. I'm working for a tourism
agency here, but it's not really well know and so I have some free time
which I want to use to in a good way.
I'm using Linux for 2,5 years now. I started with Ubuntu but switched to
Fedora with the release of F10 because I like the use and integration of
upstream software in Fedora and it looks great :)
I've some experience in programming with C# but my linux knowledge
(Shell ...) is really weak. But I want to improve my knowledge and
packaging fonts sound great for it.
I found the Fonts SIG over the excellent fedora classroom session
provided by Nicolas and now want to help you. My IRC nick is palango and
you can reach me via jabber with paul.lange(a)jabber.org.
Paul
15 years, 3 months
Needing
by Mathieu Bridon
Hi,
I'm packaging Waste's Edge in Fedora. That's a fantasy role playing
game, and as such, it needs a nice font.
Currently, one is shipped by upstream bundled with the code. Moreover,
the font shipped is not free. This is bad, so the font must be removed
from the Fedora package.
Upstream isn't really willing to fix this, but he agrees on me
removing the font from the package and using another one, as long as
it "looks nice". :)
My question here, to the guys who have all knowledge about fonts in
Fedora, could someone indicate me a font that could be used ?
Here are examples of what it currently looks like:
http://bochecha.fedorapeople.org/game-menu.png (the font used by menu items)
http://bochecha.fedorapeople.org/game-intro.png
I tried with DejaVu or other fonts available in Fedora, but the result
wasn't great. For example, for DejaVu, the letter are too thin, which
made the text hard ot read (because of the shadow surrounding the
text).
(of course, if I can find a nice free font, I might be able to
convince upstream to switching to it for its next release)
Anyone here knows a nice font ? :)
Regards,
----------
Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)
French Fedora Ambassador
----------
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
15 years, 3 months
Legal issues with new font guidelines
by Roozbeh Pournader
Hi.
I was dutifully converting my font packages to the new guidelines,
when I ran into a possible legal issue.
For the sake of argument, let us assume a font licensed under OFL,
called Mardana. The upstream tarball has two families inside, Mardana
Sans and Mardana Serif, in TTF format. The text of the OFL license is
not included in the TTFs themselves, but in a separate text file in
the tarball. Actually, let's assume the TTFs themselves don't have any
copyright or licensing metadata.
According to the new font packaging guidelines, there would be three
packages, mardana-fonts-common, mardana-serif-fonts, and
mardana-sans-fonts. All documentation related files will be in
*-common, and all the actual TTFs would be in *-sans-* and *-serif-*.
So, someone finds about the fonts, wants to use them on Windows,
searches for them, and finds our binary RPM for Mardana Sans, and
downloads it. She then opens it with some tool and installs it on her
machine.
But that's a license violation by us:
"2) Original or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled,
redistributed and/or sold with any software, provided that each copy
contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be
included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or
in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or
binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user."
But we are not providing any copyright notice or license in our binary
RPM, that is supposedly the "software" that that Font Software is
bundled with. All we say, is two pointers: "OFL" in the RPM license
tag, and "mardana-fonts-common" in the requires tag.
Of course, if the user really wants to, she can investigate the binary
RPM, and find pointers to the actual license, and go and find the
license. But we would not be redistributing the license with "each
copy".
Please enlighten me.
Roozbeh
15 years, 3 months
Packging Fonts at FAD SCaLE was fedora-fonts-list
by Clint Savage
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net> wrote:
> Le lundi 26 janvier 2009 à 11:50 -0500, Stephen Carter a écrit :
>
>> Thanks for the quick response, all those links do answer quite a few
>> questions, but I have one more: What should I do with fonts on the
>> wishlist that I am working on, or planning on working on? Do I just edit
>> the wiki and remove them from the wishlist, move them to a different
>> page, or what? Basically, what I want to know is, how do I let people
>> know "Hey I'm working on this font!" So that someone else doesn't
>> duplicate my work.
>
> If you follow the procedure correctly the font will be removed from the
> wishlist at the time you submit your review request. I don't think it
> would be very smart to remove entries which have not even reached the
> review stage: people would remove them, move along before finishing up,
> and the work on the wishlist entry would be lost.
>
> You can however announce what you intend to work on this mailing list.
>
> --
> Nicolas Mailhot
>
This seems like a reasonable place to announce that we're going to be
doing a Fedora Activity at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE)
on Feb 20. As one of the major activities, I've planned to take
several fonts and package them, and am looking for more people to come
down and help with this effort. The goal I have is to package around
10-15 fonts in that day and at least get them in for review.
If you would like to come and help, I would love to have you join us,
the details of the FAD are available below:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_at_SCaLE_7x
If you are unclear what a FAD is, have a read here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_-_FAD
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_organize_a_FAD
Cheers,
Clint
15 years, 3 months
