Lohit vs Noto Indic fonts

[Jens-Ulrik Petersen]

Hi, we have been thinking about the default fonts for Indic (Indian)
scripts in Fedora.

For many languages in Fedora we are already using Google's open-source Noto
fonts (for most Western languages and also Arabic and CJK (Chinese,
Japanese and Korean) and more, not least Emoji too. Also already for
Gurmukhi (Punjabi) and Sinhala.

$ rpm -qa google-noto-*-fonts | wc -l
26

Noto fonts have the advantage that they are available in different faces
("Sans" and "Serif") and multiple weights (also as Variable Fonts (VF),
which can save a lot of space). They also seem to be generally actively
maintained.

So we would like feedback on how Indian Fedora users feel about using the
Indic Noto fonts compared to Lohit fonts (which we haven't been able to
maintain actively for some time now), given the above advantages.

Sudip Shil has prepared some comparison screenshots using his fonts-compare
tool of Lohit vs Noto: see
https://sshil.fedorapeople.org/lohit-vs-noto-comparison.html

To easily test Noto yourself, Sudip Shil has also prepared a Copr repo
which contains the Lohit fonts rebuilt with lower priority:
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/sshil/indic-fonts-test which needs
to be enabled:

$ sudo dnf copr enable sshil/indic-fonts-test

Furthermore it is necessary to install the corresponding Noto VF fonts

$ sudo dnf install google-noto-sans-devanagari-vf-fonts
google-noto-sans-bengali-vf-fonts google-noto-sans-gujarati-vf-fonts
google-noto-sans-kannada-vf-fonts google-noto-sans-oriya-vf-fonts
google-noto-sans-tamil-vf-fonts google-noto-sans-telugu-vf-fonts

Then run:

$ sudo dnf update lohit-*-fonts

*Note*: if you are on Fedora Rawhide you currently have to "dnf remove
lohit-*-fonts" instead, since the Indic Noto fonts there have lower
priority currently.

And now you should see Noto as the default for most Indic scripts:

$ for lang in as bho bn brx doi gu hi hne kn kok mai ml mni mr or pa sa sat
ta te; do echo -en "$lang\t" ; fc-match :lang=$lang family; done

You may prefer to try this first in a test VM, or to shut down your
important applications using Indic text first before changing the fonts on
your system.

The instructions on Sudip's Copr repo also include the steps for undoing
these changes.

Do let us know what you think of the Noto fonts compared to Lohit for Indic
scripts.
If they look good we can consider switching those scripts to default to
Noto.

Jens

[Dave Crossland]

I'm the Noto product owner at Google Fonts, I expect the wider range of
styles available by itself would make Noto fonts a better choice :) I would
be happy to hear any aspects of Lohit that are superior

[Pro Neon]

Hello
I am mainly concerned with the Odia fonts.

What is the current state of Matra (diacritics) and Juktakhyara
(combination of multiple letters) for Odia in Noto?

I mean how correctly and closely are they rendered compared to how they are
actually handwritten?

Are they better than what Lohit was offering?

Sincerely
proneon267

On Mon, 12 Jun 2023, 02:39 Dave Crossland,  wrote:
> I'm the Noto product owner at Google Fonts, I expect the wider range of
> styles available by itself would make Noto fonts a better choice :) I would
> be happy to hear any aspects of Lohit that are superior
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[Anirban Mitra]

To all concerned
 I would like to raise the issue that neither Noto nor Lohit Bengali
are updated to include modern forms of conjucts used is schoolbooks
nowadays and used traditional forms
for illustation see https://mitradranirban.github.io/fonts-mukti/pics/salt.png
Though it is same for both the fonts, I would prefer Noto fonts as
they are updated regularly and has more chance of including the
feature in future

On Mon, 12 Jun 2023 at 02:39, Dave Crossland  wrote:
> I'm the Noto product owner at Google Fonts, I expect the wider range of
> styles available by itself would make Noto fonts a better choice :) I would
> be happy to hear any aspects of Lohit that are superior

Lohit follows an open source development methodology. One can provide a
patch to the sfd file. We are building from source in Fedora.
AFAIK Noto is only available in binary format. (TTF).

But given its already used for many languages, we can definitely go ahead
for India fonts as well.
What i suggest:
1. Lets Noto get installed by default.
2. Lets have Lohit fontconfig priority more than Noto, so if someone
installing it manually, it will become default for particular Indian
languages.

Regards,
Pravin
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[Benson Muite]

On 6/12/23 19:56, [e-mail] wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Jun 2023 at 02:39, Dave Crossland <[e-mail]
> > wrote:
> I'm the Noto product owner at Google Fonts, I expect the wider range
> of styles available by itself would make Noto fonts a better choice
> :) I would be happy to hear any aspects of Lohit that are superior 
>
>
> Lohit follows an open source development methodology. One can provide a
> patch to the sfd file. We are building from source in Fedora.
> AFAIK Noto is only available in binary format. (TTF).
>
> But given its already used for many languages, we can definitely go
> ahead for India fonts as well.
> What i suggest:
> Lets Noto get installed by default.
> Lets have Lohit fontconfig priority more than Noto, so if someone
>
> installing it manually, it will become default for particular Indian
> languages.

The Google Fonts toolchain is challenging to package, so it seems
unlikely that Google Fonts can be built from source in Fedora soon.  It
is nice to have alternatives such as Lohit that just require FontForge.
It seems easier for community members to add Glyphs with FontForge than
with the Google Fonts toolchain.  The suggestion to enable priority for
Lohit if it is installed seems reasonable and may be helpful for other
language specific fonts.
> Regards,
> Pravin
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[Dave Crossland]

Noto fonts are available with sources and fully libre CI build systems at
GitHub.com/notofonts and follow open source development methodology,
although they use the format preferred by the font designer. Some use sfd,
one even uses their own custom font code in python, but - as in the
majority of the font development industry - the majority use glyphsapp.

Google Fonts has invested significant resources into making the noto fonts
as libre as practical given industry norms and preferences: Anyone CAN
provide a patch to the source files via GitHub PR, and Google maintains the
libre glyphsLib python package to convert .ufo to .glyphs, and almost every
editor today supports UFO.

Google Fonts also sponsored development of the fontforge ufo import export
support, as well as numerous modern libre font editors projects (trufont,
mfek, fontra) that are all UFO based.

I would be happy to  directly connect anyone with the current noto
maintainer, Simon Cozens, if they would like to discuss contribution, but
all GitHub issues on all repos in the org go to him, so I encourage you to
just post an issue :)

Simon will be especially interested in specific details about what makes
packaging the Google fontmake/gfbuilder build systems difficult for Fedora
to package :)

[Dave Crossland]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 4:51 PM [e-mail] 
wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Jun 2023 at 02:39, Dave Crossland  wrote:
> > I'm the Noto product owner at Google Fonts, I expect the wider range of
> > styles available by itself would make Noto fonts a better choice :) I would
> > be happy to hear any aspects of Lohit that are superior
>
> Lohit follows an open source development methodology. One can provide a
> patch to the sfd file. We are building from source in Fedora.
> AFAIK Noto is only available in binary format. (TTF).
>
> But given its already used for many languages, we can definitely go ahead
> for India fonts as well.
> What i suggest:
> Lets Noto get installed by default.
> Lets have Lohit fontconfig priority more than Noto, so if someone
>
> installing it manually, it will become default for particular Indian
> languages.

I love it!
>

[Jens-Ulrik Petersen]

On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 11:35 AM Dave Crossland  wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 4:51 PM [e-mail] 
> wrote:
> > On Mon, 12 Jun 2023 at 02:39, Dave Crossland  wrote:
> > > I'm the Noto product owner at Google Fonts, I expect the wider range of
> > > styles available by itself would make Noto fonts a better choice :) I would
> > > be happy to hear any aspects of Lohit that are superior
> >
> > Lohit follows an open source development methodology. One can provide a
> > patch to the sfd file. We are building from source in Fedora.
> > AFAIK Noto is only available in binary format. (TTF).
> >
> > But given its already used for many languages, we can definitely go ahead
> > for India fonts as well.
> > What i suggest:
> > Lets Noto get installed by default.
> > Lets have Lohit fontconfig priority more than Noto, so if someone
> >
> > installing it manually, it will become default for particular Indian
> > languages.
>
> I love it!
> >

Thank you everyone for the feedback so far.

Since the feedback so far seems generally positive, I started drafting
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Indic_Noto_fonts proposal for Fedora
39.

Have given the relative fonts priorities some thought... while in theory I
am sympathetic to the novel priority suggestion, it is probably not
realistic in practice: we have never done default fonts changes that way
before in Fedora so I think it would set a bad precedent, but I think we
should make sure that if one uninstalls the Noto Indic fonts, the Lohit
fonts should still remain the default - I do think that should be possible.

Thanks, Jens

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 at 18:57, Jens-Ulrik Petersen 
wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 11:35 AM Dave Crossland  wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 4:51 PM [e-mail] 
> > wrote:
> > > On Mon, 12 Jun 2023 at 02:39, Dave Crossland  wrote:
> > > > I'm the Noto product owner at Google Fonts, I expect the wider range of
> > > > styles available by itself would make Noto fonts a better choice :) I would
> > > > be happy to hear any aspects of Lohit that are superior
> > >
> > > Lohit follows an open source development methodology. One can provide a
> > > patch to the sfd file. We are building from source in Fedora.
> > > AFAIK Noto is only available in binary format. (TTF).
> > >
> > > But given its already used for many languages, we can definitely go
> > > ahead for India fonts as well.
> > > What i suggest:
> > > Lets Noto get installed by default.
> > > Lets have Lohit fontconfig priority more than Noto, so if someone
> > >
> > > installing it manually, it will become default for particular Indian
> > > languages.
> >
> > I love it!
> > >
>
> Thank you everyone for the feedback so far.
>
> Since the feedback so far seems generally positive, I started drafting
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Indic_Noto_fonts proposal for
> Fedora 39.
>
> Have given the relative fonts priorities some thought... while in theory I
> am sympathetic to the novel priority suggestion, it is probably not
> realistic in practice: we have never done default fonts changes that way
> before in Fedora so I think it would set a bad precedent, but I think we
> should make sure that if one uninstalls the Noto Indic fonts, the Lohit
> fonts should still remain the default - I do think that should be possible.

Right, As per policy it impacts badly.
Lets users use fonts-tweak-tool to change priorities as per their
requirements.

Thanks,
Pravin
> Thanks, Jens

[Jens-Ulrik Petersen]

On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 10:29 PM [e-mail] 
wrote:
> Since the feedback so far seems generally positive, I started drafting
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Indic_Noto_fonts proposal for
> Fedora 39.
> > Have given the relative fonts priorities some thought... while in theory
> > I am sympathetic to the novel priority suggestion, it is probably not
> > realistic in practice: we have never done default fonts changes that way
> > before in Fedora so I think it would set a bad precedent, but I think we
> > should make sure that if one uninstalls the Noto Indic fonts, the Lohit
> > fonts should still remain the default - I do think that should be possible.
>
> Right, As per policy it impacts badly.
> Lets users use fonts-tweak-tool to change priorities as per their
> requirements.

Yes, thanks - let me add a mention of fonts-tweak-tool too. 👍

Jens