fonts package naming guideline

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Jeu 10 juillet 2008 10:06, Jens Petersen a écrit :

Hi,

> Nicolas brought up the point recently in a font package review that we
> should standardize the naming of our fonts packages to improve
> consistency.  The proposal is to name all source packages in the form
> "*-fonts".

Actually I didn't want to push the idea just before leaving for a long
vacation, but since it's on the table:

1. we've slowly been consolidating our font naming to foo-fonts packages

2. however we're still a long way from good consistency, such as the
one achieved Debian and Ubuntu-side

https://launchpad.net/~fonts/+packages

(note I think some of their choices are not too good, for example
using TTF when font formats change and indeed most modern fonts are
OTF)

3. consistency is good for users, it helps them find and discover
packages

4. consistency can not be achieved without deviating a little from
upstream naming, since upstreams are widly inconsistent in their
choices.

If I had to propose a convention today that would be

foundry-name-fonts (single package)
foundry-name-fonts-sub (subpackage)

Right now we're not far from it but just different enough to annoy users:

1. a few packages deviate from pure -fonts suffix
2. a lot of packages are inconsistent on the foundry bits (in
particular sil fonts are packaged in many different ways)

> If we agree on this then I think the Fonts Packaging guidelines should
> be updated to explicitly reflect this policy.
>
> Here is a list of our source packages that do not currently end in
> "-fonts":
>
> These old fonts packages should be renamed I guess:
>   fonts-ISO8859-2 -> ISO8859-2-fonts?
>   fonts-KOI8-R -> KOI-R-fonts?
>
> This should probably change:
>   fonts-hebrew-fancy -> fancy-fonts? (from culmus.sf.net)

culmus-fonts-fancy (if it's a subpackage)
culmus-fancy-fonts (if it's a standalone package)

>   thaifonts-scalable (upstream name) -> thai-scalable-fonts?

thai-scalable-fonts :)

> The following are already in the process of disappearing from rawhide:
>
>   fonts-arabic - pending removal
>   fonts-hebrew -recent devel dead.package
>   fonts-japanese - renamed to japanese-bitmap-fonts today
>
> A few others (*font*):
>   efont-unicode-bdf -> unicode-bdf-fonts?  (maybe better to replace
> with
> GNU Unifont?)

gnu-uni-fonts

>   freefont (maybe this too?)

gnu-free-fonts

>   terminus-font -> terminus-fonts?
>
> 3, TeX fonts
> Probably TeX fonts are outside this discussion?:

I don't do TeX. I's sure lova for a TeX expert would join the SIG and
contribute to dicussions.

>   (tetex-fonts-hebrew, tex-fonts-hebrew, tetex-eurofont,
> tetex-font-cm-lgc, tetex-font-kerkis)
>
> Did I miss any? :)

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot