Q: bundled fonts.

[Alec Leamas]

On 2013-04-23 16:17, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 03:37:03PM +0200, Alec Leamas wrote:
>> In a large package (openerp7) I have found some bundled .ttf and
>> .otf font files. One of these (Inconsolata) seems to exist in Fedora
>> as levien-inconsolata-fonts, the others (see below) I cannot find
>> with a quick search.
>>
>> The fonts are parts of specific addons (a. k. a. plugins). They are
>> referenced  with explicit paths in various .css or css/* files.
>>
>> The entypo-webfont.ttf seems to have a working upstream
>> http://www.entypo.com.
>> I cannot find an upstream for mnmliconsv21-webfont.ttf, hint is that
>> it's generated by "Font Squirrel" ?!
>> There seem to be an upstream for zocial-regular-webfont.ttf, at
>> https://github.com/adamstac/zocial, providing a woff file.
>>
>> Now, what should I do with these? Packaging GL tells me to "avoid"
>> bundling ttf/otf files. What's this in this case?
>>
>> Utterly confused. Any hint, out there?
> We had a similar problem with a package a few weeks ago:
>
> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/packaging/2013-April/009046.html
>
> The first thing to work out: Does simply deleting the font file(s)
> make any difference to the documentation / package?  In our case, the
> packager could simply delete the file [in %install] and it appeared to
> make absolutely no difference to the rendered HTML documentation, thus
> problem solved :-)
>
> Rich.
>
Thanks for reply.... I'm tempted, but here is a test problem. This is 
about real webpages, and to be frank I'm not quite sure how to test 
thoroughly. Just removing feels like it could introduce bugs I will not 
catch. And maintenance would be a problem...

Digging deeper, I find that all references seem to be part of @font-face 
definitions like

@font-face{
...
         src: url('zocial-regular-webfont.eot');
         src: url('zocial-regular-webfont.eot?#iefix') 
format('embedded-opentype'),
                 url('zocial-regular-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
                 url('zocial-regular-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
                 url('zocial-regular-webfont.svg#ZocialRegular') 
format('svg');
...}

So one question would be what happens in such a definition if none of 
the src: elements are found.

But even if it would be possible to use a fallback for some fonts, 
things like entypo-webfont really can't be substituted: it's a symbol 
font with pictograms, not likely to be replaceable. Seems that 
zocial-regular-webfont and mnmlicons are the same kind.

Reading Nicholas's reply to "your" thread I get the impression that the 
browser would download these fonts if they are not installed on the 
machine running to browser. Ergo:
  - At least some fonts are not replaceable
  - The web page must be able to provide the  font to the client if 
requested.

Does  the GL general bundling exception for "javascript intended to be 
served to a web browser" cover this? In that case, this might be solved, 
I guess.

Otherwise, is there any way to avoid the need to package these fonts 
(for those with an upstream) and patch the css paths? The latter part 
seem problematic to me since the complete filesystem isn't really 
available in the webserver context. Or is it? (i. e., can a web 
application for sure use a resource under /usr/share?)

Still confused, but on a higher level.

--alec