fonts July 2008

fonts@lists.fedoraproject.org

20 participants
55 discussions

Proposal: reference locl feature file
by Vasile Gaburici 24 Jul '08

24 Jul '08

It's surprisingly hard to find good information on how the locl OpenType feature should be handled for various languages. I propose we add a well commented reference fea file somewhere on the Fedora wiki. It probably won't be possible to automatically import this reference into every font without modification because glyphs may be missing in some fonts etc., but it should still be useful enough to subset from. Perhaps in the future FontForge may be able to intelligently import the rules based on the glyphs included in the font... So far, I've been scraping for references, below are the ones I've got. Please contribute the ones you know: 1) DejaVu's source. After the recent discussion on bug #455981, I know DejaVu cares about languages Adobe hasn't even heard of. 2) Adam Twardoch's take on Latin scripts: http://typophile.com/node/29469/168548#comment-168548 3) The Gyre font source: http://www.tug.org/texlive/devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/doc/fonts/tex-gyre/qzcm… 4) An informative, but not so coherent discussion here: http://typophile.com/node/16705 5) The issue of double encoding explained: http://groups.msn.com/FontLab/tipsandtricks.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1…

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TTF/OTF packaging thoughts?
by Nicolas Mailhot 24 Jul '08

24 Jul '08

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. 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). 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 5. But not shipping them will annoy other classes of users (TEX users, etc) 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 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? -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Re: TTF/OTF packaging thoughts?
by Nicolas Mailhot 23 Jul '08

23 Jul '08

Le mercredi 23 juillet 2008 à 14:36 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod a écrit : > On Wed, 2008-07-23 at 20:14 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > > > > Can you patch fontconfig so apps get OTF (OpenType CFF) versions by > > default, unless they explicitely request OpenType TTF files? (when the > > same version of the same font is available in both formats) > > Not right now. But filed it at least: > https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16818 Thanks! -- Nicolas Mailhot Still looking for the pony fairy

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Analysis of combining diacritics support
by Vasile Gaburici 23 Jul '08

23 Jul '08

Here's something that will make Nicolas proud. Following the discussion from [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=455981] I've looked at the level of support in Fedora of combining diacritics for Romanian. The summary: - Charis & Doulos SIL work perfectly - Linux Libertine works too, but pango complains about a GSUB error; fontmatrix results differ a bit (probably because of this) - DejaVu has positioning issues - Liberation and Minion Pro (and presumably most commercial fonts) don't support combining, so pango steals diacritics from another font. The result is pretty bad. You'll find the test here: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~gaburici/comb.tar I'm too tired right now to write a description for each screenshot, but if something is unclear, ask and I'll reply tomorrow. Given that commercial fonts suck at this, I suspect we won't see the combing method used often. Not for Romanian anyway. It seems however that adding diacritics to arbitrary letters is useful in Dutch, according to this post anyway: [http://www.typophile.com/node/2764#comment-99219]

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Call for OpenType fonts! [Was: Re: Fwd: [Fwd: the ivory tower and the bazaar]]
by Vasile Gaburici 23 Jul '08

23 Jul '08

Since we are debating the state of Fedora fonts, I'd also like to add that Fedora should ship as many OpenType fonts as possible. Why? Because it (finally!) includes a decent bundle of TeX (texlive), which contains XeTeX -- a version of TeX that can use advanced OpenType features directly. XeTeX is still a bit inferior to pdftex in some respects (no microtypography), but is far easier to use. Yeah, OOo should get OpenType support too, but I personally don't care much about it. FYI: Because Fedora up to release 8 kept including the obsolete tetex, which I had to patch manually many times, I skipped all Fedoras between 5 and 9! Anything in between would have been a downgrade for me after I started manually adding up to date packages to tetex. And no, I could not just add them locally because they conflicted with the bundled packages in complex ways, so the old ones had to be deleted -- so no yum update tetex for me.

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[mnowak@redhat.com: License of Togoshi Fonts]
by Michal Nowak 23 Jul '08

23 Jul '08

I sent this to Togoshi Fonts maintainer via SourceForge.jp system (his email is dead to me) -- no response yet. ----- Forwarded message from Michal Nowak <mnowak(a)redhat.com> ----- Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:00:51 +0200 From: Michal Nowak <mnowak(a)redhat.com> To: mshio(a)users.sourceforge.jp Subject: License of Togoshi Fonts User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i Hi mshio-san, Fedora comunity would like to pack Togoshi Fonts them to be included in Fedora Linux Distribution. To proceed in packaging we are missing clear state on what actually is the current license? I went thru SF.net web page and font atchives there too, but I failed to found any lincese text. Could you be clear on this? The prefered way is to have license inside source package, which we can download from SF.net and/or inside the font itself as a comment (can be seen in gnome-font-viewer). Thank you for your time and hope in positive reply, mshio-san. PS: Here are the Fedora approved licenses http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#SoftwareLicenses ----- End forwarded message -----

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Re: Mukti fontset license
by Michal Nowak 23 Jul '08

23 Jul '08

ping? On 10:11 Wed 16 Jul , Michal Nowak wrote: > Hi, > > Fedora Linux distribution considered packaging Your Mukti fontset, > but we found out that the license is GPLv2+, which we consider as > excellent for software but not for fonts. > > The problem we see is that when you embed the font inside PDF file > then the whole document has to be licensed as a GPLv2+ too. This is > thought to be controversial. > > Do you think it can be possible to change the license to e.g. 'GPLv2+ > + Font Exception'? The Exception would be this one: > > http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException > > Which just says that just embedding the font does not mean that you > have to license your file (e.g. book) as GPLv2+ too. > > Let me know whay you think. > > Looking forward to your reply. > > Regards, > Michal >

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Fwd: [Fwd: the ivory tower and the bazaar]
by Vasile Gaburici 22 Jul '08

22 Jul '08

Stupid gmail doesn't reply to all recipients by default, so see below. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Vasile Gaburici <vgaburici(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Fwd: the ivory tower and the bazaar] They say a picture is worth a thousand words. [http://www.cs.umd.edu/~gaburici/linux-fonts.png] On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net> wrote: > -------- Message transféré -------- > De: Gustavo Ferreira > À: fedora-fonts-list-request > Sujet: the ivory tower and the bazaar > Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:38:59 -0300 > > On Jul 20, 2008, at 2:50 PM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > >> If the free/open font scene was striving Red Hat needn't have >> shelled a >> lot of money to a closed foundry like Ascender. Or the GNOME >> Foundation >> needn't have done the same with Bitstream for Vera. Experience >> shows it >> is very possible to extend a font with little coverage to more than >> decent one but it requires making a lot of noise around unfinished >> font >> cores with correct licensing to get someone interested. And you don't >> get there via traditionnal ivory tower isolated font designer >> workflow. > > i have yet to see one good, original, well-made typeface developed in > the bazaar way. can you name one? > > also, please don't be ungrateful to the "isolated ivory-tower > designer workflow", since it has produced the best foss-fonts out there. > > i challenge the "free & open font crowd" to promote free/open fonts > on the basis of their typographic quality, without appealing to below- > the-belt demonization of "proprietary designers" and "proprietary > tools". > >> Teams was released in 2000 by TopTeam. It took 8 years before someone >> picked it up and started updating it (Edrip). Have Debian (and other >> distributions, sadly Fedora not included) wasted their time by >> publishing Teams for 8 years in its poor state? If they hadn't I >> strongly suspect Edrip would not have happened. >> >> We're seeding our future. Those things take time, a lot of time. >> And the >> future will happen faster if people stop putting their heads in the >> sand, wasting time on proprietary fonts or font tools, and get to >> work. > >> During this year's LGM a concerted effort created a new nicely >> licensed >> font from an old fossilizing one in a few days. Just a few years ago >> this would have been complete science fiction. > > do you mean NotCourier Sans? i don't dislike the result, but let's be > honest about it -- chopping off serifs from an existing font is not > really type-design... > > cheers, > - gustavo. > > > -- > Nicolas Mailhot > > _______________________________________________ > Fedora-fonts-list mailing list > Fedora-fonts-list(a)redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-fonts-list > >

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Fedora font inclusion timeline
by Nicolas Mailhot 21 Jul '08

21 Jul '08

Hi, For those interested by a little history, I've added a timeline in the wiki: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_inclusion_history Feel free to correct/complete it. As anyone can check until F9 we weren't very dynamic and spent our time renaming old packages. Regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Adobe FDK under wine? Or similar FOSS tool?
by Vasile Gaburici 21 Jul '08

21 Jul '08

Editing OpenType feature tables with fontforge is a big PITA. Adding a locl table to Linux Libertine, see [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Tasks/Ro_fonts#Linux_Libertine] took me three hours (testing included). And that just for the regular font. Parts of the table are (or rather should be) common between files, but fontforge doesn't support that, so I have to start over for the bold and italic! This presentation [http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/atypi2006/slye_lisbon-05.pdf] should give you an idea what the right tool for the job is like. The good news is that Adobe FDK is free (as in beer). The bad news is that Adobe makes only Win32 and OS X versions of it. Does anyone here have any experience with it? Does it work in wine? Also, does anyone know any FOSS tool that uses Adobe feature files or similar text based files (please not that thingie that converts fonts to XML). Fontforge is supposed to be able to import fea files, but currently it's broken (does nothing); maintainers have been notified... -- Vasile

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fonts July 2008