Showing fonts in GNOME Software

[Richard Hughes]

Hi all,

I wanted to decentralize the storage of font metadata used in
gnome-software. I would be appreciative of any comments to this
article: http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2014/10/15/gnome-software-and-fonts/
-- Once any big issues are ironed out, I'll send that to
devel@fedoraproject for comments.

Thanks,

Richard.

[Paul Flo Williams]

Richard Hughes wrote:
>  Hi all,
>
>  I wanted to decentralize the storage of font metadata used in
>  gnome-software. I would be appreciative of any comments to this
>  article:
>  http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2014/10/15/gnome-software-and-fonts/
>  -- Once any big issues are ironed out, I'll send that to
>  devel@fedoraproject for comments. 
I am curious about the metadata files you're adding to font packages: they
all claim to be copyrighted by you, but without any licensing information.
I presume the licence of the font package itself isn't affected?

-- 
Paul Flo Williams
http://hisdeedsaredust.com

[Richard Hughes]

On 15 October 2014 21:08, Paul Flo Williams <paul(a)frixxon.co.uk&gt; wrote:
>  I am curious about the metadata files you're adding to font
> packages: they
>  all claim to be copyrighted by you, but without any licensing information. 
The licensing of the files is CC0 -- it's specified in the metadata
file itself. I'm happy relicencing this to any acceptable content
licence in any of the package if this is required.

>  I presume the licence of the font package itself isn't affected?
I suppose really the licence field should include "CC0" -- but it
might be simpler just to change the metadata licence to be CC-BY (or
whatever the font already is) just for simplicity.

Note: I'm only going to add metadata to ten packages as a test for
tomorrows metadata build.

Richard

[Parag Nemade]

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 1:43 AM, Richard Hughes <hughsient(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On 15 October 2014 21:08, Paul Flo Williams
> <paul(a)frixxon.co.uk&gt; wrote:
> > I am curious about the metadata files you're adding to font packages: they
> > all claim to be copyrighted by you, but without any licensing information.
>
>  The licensing of the files is CC0 -- it's specified in the metadata
>  file itself. I'm happy relicencing this to any acceptable content
>  licence in any of the package if this is required.
>
> > I presume the licence of the font package itself isn't affected?
>
>  I suppose really the licence field should include "CC0" -- but it
>  might be simpler just to change the metadata licence to be CC-BY (or
>  whatever the font already is) just for simplicity.
>
>  Note: I'm only going to add metadata to ten packages as a test for
>  tomorrows metadata build. 
  I just read the blog post and will add appdata files to all fonts
packages I own by this weekend in F21 and F22.
I will keep license for appdata files as CC-BY but then I think
license tag should also include "CC-BY".

Regards,
Parag.

[Parag Nemade]

Hi again,

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Parag N(पराग़) <panemade(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 1:43 AM, Richard Hughes <hughsient(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> > On 15 October 2014 21:08, Paul Flo Williams <paul(a)frixxon.co.uk&gt; wrote:
> >> I am curious about the metadata files you're adding to font packages: they
> >> all claim to be copyrighted by you, but without any licensing information.
> >
> > The licensing of the files is CC0 -- it's specified in the metadata
> > file itself. I'm happy relicencing this to any acceptable content
> > licence in any of the package if this is required.
> >
> >> I presume the licence of the font package itself isn't affected?
> >
> > I suppose really the licence field should include "CC0" -- but it
> > might be simpler just to change the metadata licence to be CC-BY (or
> > whatever the font already is) just for simplicity.
> >
> > Note: I'm only going to add metadata to ten packages as a test for
> > tomorrows metadata build.
>
>    I just read the blog post and will add appdata files to all fonts
>  packages I own by this weekend in F21 and F22.
>  I will keep license for appdata files as CC-BY but then I think
>  license tag should also include "CC-BY". 
Looks like we better should seek FPC advice on changing all such font
package license tags. I have just built
typemade-josefinsansstd-light-fonts in rawhide.

I have filed a FPC ticket https://fedorahosted.org/fpc/ticket/462 and
going to ask the same on FPC list.

Regards,
Parag

[Richard Hughes]

On 16 October 2014 06:47, Parag N(पराग़) <panemade(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Looks like we better should seek FPC advice on changing all such
> font
>  package license tags. I have just built
>  typemade-josefinsansstd-light-fonts in rawhide. 
Great, thanks.

>  I have filed a FPC ticket https://fedorahosted.org/fpc/ticket/462
> and
>  going to ask the same on FPC list. 
Cool. You can use a random non-content licence for the MetaInfo file,
e.g. GPLv3+ or OFL, but I'm not sure how much sense that makes for an
XML file. Adding CC-BY or CC0 to the licence list is probably the
cleanest thing to do.

Richard.

On 15 October 2014 20:32, Richard Hughes <hughsient(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  Hi all,
>
>  I wanted to decentralize the storage of font metadata used in
>  gnome-software. I would be appreciative of any comments to this
>  article:
>  http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2014/10/15/gnome-software-and-fonts/
>  -- Once any big issues are ironed out, I'll send that to
>  devel@fedoraproject for comments.
>  
I am with you regarding having font metadata packaged with fonts. It will
be good to get font represented in nice way AT gnome-software.

While going through metadata, i found situation is bit familiar with
fontconfig (.conf) files in font packages. As per font packaging guideline
fontconfig file is mandatory for each font packages.

1. I think best way is to improve packaging guideline and make font
metadata also mandatory. Provide some nice templates. Report bugs again
fonts and see how many responds and patch for remaining.

2. Existing fontconfig files added by font maintainer in font packages does
not have any Copyright or Licensing.  IMHO good to keep things easy and
avoid dual licensing.

Best Regards,
Pravin Satpute


http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fontconfig_packaging_tips

[Richard Hughes]

On 16 October 2014 08:07, pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com <pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  While going through metadata, i found situation is bit familiar with
>  fontconfig (.conf) files in font packages. As per font packaging guideline
>  fontconfig file is mandatory for each font packages. 
Kinda. I think fontconfig files are a very good idea to be mandatory,
so they actually work when installed. We *don't* want all fonts to
have MetaInfo files however; some fonts are poor quality or only
contain some glyphs (e.g. the Ubuntu title font) and we don't want to
show those.

>  2. Existing fontconfig files added by font maintainer in font
> packages does
>  not have any Copyright or Licensing.  IMHO good to keep things easy and
>  avoid dual licensing. 
The metadata extractor will accept files without copyright, but it's
rather stricter on licensing; we need to make sure the output
AppStream metadata is a sane and with a redistributable license.

Richard.

On 16 October 2014 13:38, Richard Hughes <hughsient(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 16 October 2014 08:07, pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com
> <pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com&gt;
>  wrote:
>  > While going through metadata, i found situation is bit familiar with
>  > fontconfig (.conf) files in font packages. As per font packaging
>  guideline
>  > fontconfig file is mandatory for each font packages.
>
>  Kinda. I think fontconfig files are a very good idea to be mandatory,
>  so they actually work when installed. We *don't* want all fonts to
>  have MetaInfo files however; some fonts are poor quality or only
>  contain some glyphs (e.g. the Ubuntu title font) and we don't want to
>  show those.
>  
Does this means only a subset of packages will be accessible via
gnome-software and for other users need to do dnf search/install?

User will not see particular font unless until he search. I think good to
allow all and let user decide which is good quality and which is not.

Regards,
Pravin Satpute

[Richard Hughes]

On 16 October 2014 09:59, pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com <pravin.d.s(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Does this means only a subset of packages will be accessible via
>  gnome-software and for other users need to do dnf search/install? 
Yes, or use the old gnome-packagekit tools.

>  User will not see particular font unless until he search. I think
> good to
>  allow all and let user decide which is good quality and which is not. 
According to the designers we only want to show high quality fonts in
the software center; just showing everything decreases the
signal-to-noise ratio and makes it's unusable. We already filter
broken applications and the UX is much better because of it.

Richard