current state and future of liberation-fonts

[Fabian Greffrath]

[Sorry for the re-post, I did not know had to subscribe to the Fedora list.]

Hello Pravin Satpute et al.,

I am one of the maintainers of the liberation-fonts package in Debian 
(it is called fonts-liberation there [1]) and I am a bit concerned about 
the current state of development and the future of these fonts. I have 
read that the new release 2.00.1 based on Google Crosscore fonts has 
been defered from Fedora 18 because of rendering regressions [2]. 
However, since then development has apparently stopped in the GIT 
repository [3].

Have these rendering regressions been identified? Are they going to get 
addressed in the fonts or in other parts of the font rendering stack?

Will there be another release of the liberation-fonts in the short term 
or have these fonts been defered altogether in favor of another font family?

Thanks for your replies,

  - Fabian


[1] http://packages.qa.debian.org/f/fonts-liberation.html
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=885596
[3] https://git.fedorahosted.org/git/liberation-fonts.git

On 25 June 2013 13:36, Fabian Greffrath <fabian(a)greffrath.com&gt; wrote:

>  [Sorry for the re-post, I did not know had to subscribe to the
> Fedora
>  list.]
>
>  Hello Pravin Satpute et al.,
>
>  I am one of the maintainers of the liberation-fonts package in Debian (it
>  is called fonts-liberation there [1]) and I am a bit concerned about the
>  current state of development and the future of these fonts. I have read
>  that the new release 2.00.1 based on Google Crosscore fonts has been
>  defered from Fedora 18 because of rendering regressions [2]. However, since
>  then development has apparently stopped in the GIT repository [3].
>  
As you might have already read. Though Liberation 1.0 and Liberation 2.0
has same outline in source files the difference is the Hinting
instructions. Hinting instructions differ in both. Due to community
preferring old Liberation 1.0 hinting. Decision is made to go with
Liberation 1.0.


>  Have these rendering regressions been identified? Are they going to get
>  addressed in the fonts or in other parts of the font rendering stack?
>  
Yes, Regression was identified.
In fact i am also thinking on this line. We have couple of bugs pending
[4][5] in Fedora against Liberation 1.0 to add some more characters. At the
same time the same characters are already available in Liberation 2.0.


Problem is Liberation 1.0 and 2.0 License are incompatible (OFL and
Liberation) so we can't copy Liberation 2.0 huge glyph set to Liberation
1.0.

Option is
1. Tweak/Modify Liberation 2.0 hinting instructions to match Liberation
1.0. That is big task
2. Adding more glyphs to Liberation 1.0, this is also big one.

Presently nothing is happening on this both option.



>  Will there be another release of the liberation-fonts in the short term or
>  have these fonts been defered altogether in favor of another font family?
>  
No. Liberation 1.0 is not deferred in favor of other font. Since there is
no alternative font providing same crisp hinting effect and same time have
more glyph coverage. Fedora still uses Liberation 1.0 and if there are any
major bugs upstream is ready to fix and make new releases.

What version of Liberation does Debian ships presently?

[4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=952778
[5] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=953703



[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=885596
>  [3]
> https://git.fedorahosted.org/**git/liberation-fonts.git<https://git.fe...
>  ______________________________**_________________
>  fonts mailing list
>  fonts(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>
> https://admin.fedoraproject.**org/mailman/listinfo/fonts<https://admin...
>  http://fonts.fedoraproject.**org/ <http://fonts.fedoraproject.org/>

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am 25.06.2013 10:53, schrieb pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com:
>  Yes, Regression was identified.
>  In fact i am also thinking on this line. We have couple of bugs pending
>  [4][5] in Fedora against Liberation 1.0 to add some more characters. At
>  the same time the same characters are already available in Liberation 2.0. 
[4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=952778

Could this be related to the following bug reported in Debian BTS?

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=680581

>  No. Liberation 1.0 is not deferred in favor of other font. Since
> there
>  is no alternative font providing same crisp hinting effect and same time
>  have more glyph coverage. Fedora still uses Liberation 1.0 and if there
>  are any major bugs upstream is ready to fix and make new releases. 
Alright, so the current plan is "wait and see what happens"?

>  What version of Liberation does Debian ships presently? 
1.07.2 with a couple of patches taken from Fedora:

http://patch-tracker.debian.org/package/fonts-liberation/1.07.2-6

Cheers,

  -Fabian

On 25 June 2013 14:41, Fabian Greffrath <fabian(a)greffrath.com&gt; wrote:

>  Am 25.06.2013 10:53, schrieb pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com:
>
>   Yes, Regression was identified.
> > In fact i am also thinking on this line. We have couple of bugs pending
> > [4][5] in Fedora against Liberation 1.0 to add some more characters. At
> > the same time the same characters are already available in Liberation 2.0.
> >
>
>  [4]
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/**show_bug.cgi?id=952778<https://bugzilla....
>
>  Could this be related to the following bug reported in Debian BTS?
>
>
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-**bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=680581<http://bugs....


Yes, looks same. I will fix this in next couple of week and will do next
release of Liberation 1.0


>   No. Liberation 1.0 is not deferred in favor of other font. Since there
> > is no alternative font providing same crisp hinting effect and same time
> > have more glyph coverage. Fedora still uses Liberation 1.0 and if there
> > are any major bugs upstream is ready to fix and make new releases.
> >
>
>  Alright, so the current plan is "wait and see what happens"? 


Yeah. no option. At least will fix the major issues. So we can say in
maintenance mode no new development.


>   What version of Liberation does Debian ships presently?
> >
>
>  1.07.2 with a couple of patches taken from Fedora:
>
>
> http://patch-tracker.debian.**org/package/fonts-liberation/**1.07.2-6<...
>  

Looks good.

Regards,
Pravin Satpute

[Fabian Greffrath]

FWIW, I have prepared packages for fonts-liberation 2.00.1 in our GIT
repository in the "experimental" branch. Since release from version 2
onward lack the sans-narrow variant due to license incompatibilities, I
have forked the current v1 packaging to only include this variant. It is
intended to get installed as a supplement to the v2 package and can be
found in the "sans-narrow" branch.

While at it, the "master" branch contains fixes for multi-arch
installations and should probably get uploaded to unstable ASAP.

Cheers,
- Fabian

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am Dienstag, den 25.06.2013, 14:57 +0530 schrieb pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com: 
>  Yes, looks same. I will fix this in next couple of week and will do
>  next release of Liberation 1.0 
In the liberation-fonts-1_07_3 branch in GIT, the fix for 715309
(hinting problem of Liberation Sans Bold character "u" at particular
point size) is currently missing. Is that an oversight?

- Fabian

[Fabian Greffrath]

Hello Pravin et al.,

now that we have the croscore fonts available in Debian, too, I really
wonder what we need liberation v2 fonts for? I mean, are they anything
more than a rebranded version of the croscore fonts? And if yes, what
benefit do they bring over just using the croscore fonts?

Or asked differently: Shouldn't we just decide to abandon the liberation
fonts and ship croscore fonts instead? Or what would we be missing then?

Best regards,

- Fabian

On 20 August 2013 15:58, Fabian Greffrath <fabian(a)greffrath.com&gt; wrote:

>  Am Dienstag, den 25.06.2013, 14:57 +0530 schrieb
> pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com:
>  > Yes, looks same. I will fix this in next couple of week and will do
>  > next release of Liberation 1.0
>
>  In the liberation-fonts-1_07_3 branch in GIT, the fix for 715309
>  (hinting problem of Liberation Sans Bold character "u" at particular
>  point size) is currently missing. Is that an oversight?
>
>  
Apologies i missed this email :(
I have fixed this issue in the upstream 1_07_3 branch with some other fixes.
See changelog [1]

I am on the way for next release of liberation fonts waiting for fixing
bug. [2] This is bit risky bug considering hinting instructions for "l"
character in Mono fonts.

Regards,
Pravin Satpute


1.
https://git.fedorahosted.org/cgit/liberation-fonts.git/tree/ChangeLog?h=l...
2. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1005780

[Dave Crossland]

On 27 January 2014 05:39, Fabian Greffrath <fabian(a)greffrath.com&gt; wrote:
>  now that we have the croscore fonts available in Debian, too, I
> really
>  wonder what we need liberation v2 fonts for? I mean, are they anything
>  more than a rebranded version of the croscore fonts? 
croscore fonts are rebranded and relicensed (OFL) versions of the
liberation fonts :)

>  And if yes, what
>  benefit do they bring over just using the croscore fonts?
>
>  Or asked differently: Shouldn't we just decide to abandon the liberation
>  fonts and ship croscore fonts instead? Or what would we be missing then? 
They have different hinting styles.

-- 
Cheers
Dave

On 27 January 2014 11:09, Fabian Greffrath <fabian(a)greffrath.com&gt; wrote:

>  Hello Pravin et al.,
>
>  now that we have the croscore fonts available in Debian, too, I really
>  wonder what we need liberation v2 fonts for? I mean, are they anything
>  more than a rebranded version of the croscore fonts? And if yes, what
>  benefit do they bring over just using the croscore fonts?
>  
Good question.

1. Croscore Vs Liberation 1.07.3: Hinting bytecode is not same and that is
what the reason we reverted forked version of Liberation2 in Fedora from
Libreation2 to Liberation1.

2. Croscore Vs Liberation 2: Yes. Liberation2 has more improvements than
Croscore version which we forked earlier. If you see Changelog [a] Visible
one is support for Serbian glyphs support. Other bugs fixes are

Resolved "Glyphs with multiple unicode encodings inhibit subsetting"
#851790 and some other bug fixes #851791, #854601 and #851825

I am on the way to improve "l" shape before the next release so it will be
less confusing in small sizes. [b]

In the long term i would like to improve hinting instructions of
Liberation2 so it can match with liberation 1.07.3 and we will not required
to maintain two different versions. But i am not sure how much efforts
required in this. Some contribution will definitely help.


>  Or asked differently: Shouldn't we just decide to abandon the liberation
>  fonts and ship croscore fonts instead? Or what would we be missing then?
>  
As written above is the difference.

Regards,
Pravin Satpute


a. https://git.fedorahosted.org/cgit/liberation-fonts.git/tree/ChangeLog
b. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1005780

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am Montag, den 27.01.2014, 10:01 +0000 schrieb Dave Crossland: 
>  croscore fonts are rebranded and relicensed (OFL) versions of the
>  liberation fonts :) 
This might be the relation between liberation v1 and croscore, but then
in turn liberation v2 was based on croscore.

>  They have different hinting styles. 
Again, I believe this is only true for liberation v1 and croscore. I
have yet to find a difference between liberation v2 and croscore in this
regard.

- Fabian

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am Montag, den 27.01.2014, 15:37 +0530 schrieb pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com: 
>  In the long term i would like to improve hinting instructions of
>  Liberation2 so it can match with liberation 1.07.3 and we will not
>  required to maintain two different versions. But i am not sure how
>  much efforts required in this. Some contribution will definitely help. 
Thank you so much for your reply!

So at the moment it makes sense to keep both (or even all three)
variants around until it finally turns out which one will supersede all
the others. ;)

- Fabian