fonts November 2008

fonts@lists.fedoraproject.org

11 participants
22 discussions

Re: [Fwd: Droid fallback CJK and fontconfig?]
by Qianqian Fang 23 Nov '08

23 Nov '08

hi Nicolas As we discussed last time, I've sent email asking for official confirmation and clarifications of the license in the font metadata. I am now waiting to hear back from them (message attached). The Han glyphs in Droid fallback pretty much follow the Han-unification as in the unicode documentations. That means they look very much close to what Chinese mainland users preferred. The style is Heiti, which is like ttf-wqy-zenhei and is essentially a sans-serif style. There are 16,502 Hanzi in the CJK basic block, which is the union of GB2312 and Big5 charsets. Because this font is targeted at memory-limited devices, there are 15,524 Han glyphs were composed by references, the rest are stand-alone outline glyphs which can not be decomposed into components. It contains no embedded bitmaps, but the outline quality is very good. I believe most zh_* users will be very happy if this font will be used as desktop font (the current zh_* font on Fedora is wqy-bitmapfont which is also using the Han-unification forms). It may be a little bit difficult for Japanese and Korean users though. As this font does not provide the full coverage to all CJK glyphs, in the mean time, I believe the current national standards and regulations in mainland China prefer GBK (same as CJK unified ideographs), or even GB18030 (CJK basic+CJK Ext. A) coverage, so, I've planned to extend this font to at least GBK charset. That means to complete about 4500 glyphs. I and a friend are now working on an online tool to allow people to compose new glyphs from existing Droid components. It is almost working, you can browse the following link for a sample output: (need to view with firefox 3.x) http://wenq.org/enindex.cgi?ViewGlyph#SFD/Droid/%E8%85%AA the GUI is at http://wenq.org/enindex.cgi?BezierGlyph but it only has Chinese instructions so far. Once the license is sorted out, we will start promoting this project among the Chinese users, and make our way toward a more complete CJK font with this extension. I also planned to look into the reference glyphs and seek the possibility of further compression of the font. Similar to the current ttf-wqy-zenhei settings, Chinese users will also be happy to see a mono-spaced face co-existing with the regular face in ttc form. Qianqian Joe Onorato wrote: > Hi Qianqian, > > I'll follow up with the people responsible for fonts. > > -joe > > > > On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 11:09 PM, Qianqian Fang <fangqq(a)gmail.com > <mailto:fangqq@gmail.com>> wrote: > > hi Joe > > A few weeks ago, I posted a question on android-discussion group, > asking about the droid font licenses: > > http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss/browse_thread/thread/3c60867… > <http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss/browse_thread/thread/3c60867…> > > I really appreciate your feedback and confirmation on the license > matter. > > As I am an maintainer for an open-source font project, I also > maintain a few CJKV font packages for Fedora. Recently, I > mentioned my plan of making derived fonts from Droid > font family at fedora's font list, the people in charge appeared > to be very careful, and warned me to obtain a more "official" > clarification on the license before taking further actions. You > can see our discussions at > > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2008-November/msg00009.ht… > > We both felt that the best way to make the clarifications is to state > it in the metadata section of the font, there are dedicated > "License Description" > and "License Info URL" fields in the name table to specify the > font licenses: > > http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/opentype/index_name.html > > I am wondering if it is possible for android team to update the font > files and clarify the licenses. In this way, people's confusion on > the fonts > and the sdk package will completely go away. > > If you or your team member do have the plan to make this > change, I would be appreciated if you can let me know when > the updated fonts are pushed into svn, so I can mobilize my > team to start planned works around these fonts. > > thank you so much for your time and looking forward to your reply. > > Qianqian > > Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > Hi, > > As you probably know Google has released a Droid font set as part of its > Android platform. While the font licensing is being clarified > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472635 > (Fedora packaging blocker) I've taken a quick look at the font files. > > The set includes a huge "Droid Sans Fallback" font with CJK coverage. > Could the CJK folks take a look at it and tell me how this font should > be treated: as Japanese-only, Chinese-only, Korean-only before/after > current CJK defaults, etc? Han unification means someone will probably > not be happy about it. > > I've uploaded preliminary droid packages there > http://nim.fedorapeople.org/fontpackages/ > > so people can check them out. > > Regards, > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > -- > Fedora-i18n-list mailing list > Fedora-i18n-list(a)redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-i18n-list

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Re: [Fwd: Droid fallback CJK and fontconfig?]
by Qianqian Fang 23 Nov '08

23 Nov '08

Just a few more words about default Chinese font settings. There seem be a distinct dividing line among the Chinese users for their font preferences: on one side of the line, they really prefer sharp-looking bitmaped Chinese glyphs, while, the other side have strong preference in the smooth-looking of AA-ed vector rendering. The contradictions between these two groups can be constantly felt in almost all Chinese Linux forums. Using Ubuntu as an example, when Ubuntu 8.04 set wqy-zenhei as the default Chinese Sans font, it has the embedded bitmaps turned on by default. There was a strong rally against using the embedded bitmaps, because they like the vector form of ZenHei. I have to put instructions on our front page to tell people how to turn off the bitmaps. After a 400-participant survey, somebody proved that vector-preferred users are about 3:1 to the bitmap ones http://forum.ubuntu.org.cn/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=120639 (in Chinese) So, in 8.10, the bitmaps in ZenHei was turned off. Now, the CN forum of ubuntu is flooded with complains of losing their "sharp-looking glyphs", and asking how to turn on the bitmaps. I had to make another sticky post at our website to teach people how to turn it back on. What I want to say is, these two groups both have significant number of supporters. As the current settings on Fedora is the bitmap way. I would anticipate some disturbance among the users for the font style switching from one to the other if we decide to use Droid(or derivatives) as the default. Hope the font-selector tool can be released timely to help sorting out the font preference chaos: https://wiki.kubuntu.org/font-selector Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > Hi, > > As you probably know Google has released a Droid font set as part of its > Android platform. While the font licensing is being clarified > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472635 > (Fedora packaging blocker) I've taken a quick look at the font files. > > The set includes a huge "Droid Sans Fallback" font with CJK coverage. > Could the CJK folks take a look at it and tell me how this font should > be treated: as Japanese-only, Chinese-only, Korean-only before/after > current CJK defaults, etc? Han unification means someone will probably > not be happy about it. > > I've uploaded preliminary droid packages there > http://nim.fedorapeople.org/fontpackages/ > > so people can check them out. > > Regards, > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > -- > Fedora-i18n-list mailing list > Fedora-i18n-list(a)redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-i18n-list

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Droid fallback CJK and fontconfig?
by Nicolas Mailhot 23 Nov '08

23 Nov '08

Hi, As you probably know Google has released a Droid font set as part of its Android platform. While the font licensing is being clarified https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472635 (Fedora packaging blocker) I've taken a quick look at the font files. The set includes a huge "Droid Sans Fallback" font with CJK coverage. Could the CJK folks take a look at it and tell me how this font should be treated: as Japanese-only, Chinese-only, Korean-only before/after current CJK defaults, etc? Han unification means someone will probably not be happy about it. I've uploaded preliminary droid packages there http://nim.fedorapeople.org/fontpackages/ so people can check them out. Regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Re: where's the wish list for F11?
by Nicolas Mailhot 22 Nov '08

22 Nov '08

Le vendredi 21 novembre 2008 à 10:00 -0500, sean darcy a écrit : > But can't this be done without making an rpm package ( which may or may > not raise legal issues). Installing anything via an rpm will be just as legal (or not) as installing it by other means > I'm looking for something much simpler: I go buy/get a font; I open > fonts-filesystem/system-config-fonts/whatever ; I point it to the font ( > Type1, TT, etc); and the font is installed. So you're asking for a font-specific installation method. Why not add a clipart-specific one? And a templates-specific one? And a palette-specific one? This quickly ends up an unmanageable mess wasting the time of everyone involved. You already have a limited user-level font installation method for casual users (or had, a bug is open to resurect it). Anything more complex, such as a system-wide method needing to replicate all the work we already do in rpm, is a waste of resources. > Making an rpm package of the font first seems to make this more involved > than it needs to be. The key word here is seems. Like many other "shortcuts", trying to avoid making an rpm will end up a lot more work unless you really know what you're doing (which you only will after having made a few rpms). -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Re: FWN article on web font surveys
by Nicolas Mailhot 21 Nov '08

21 Nov '08

Hi Nicu, Thank you for taking the time to reply. To avoid repeating the very unpleasant 1h30 exchange I had with infra yesterday after sending my message to fedora-news, I know my limitations. I don't have the capabilities, time, or means to set up servers in the stead of infra, rewrite apps in the stead of developpers, write articles in the stead of article writers. There is not an army of me. There is one (overbooked). Please help. -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Re: where's the wish list for F11?
by Nicolas Mailhot 21 Nov '08

21 Nov '08

Le vendredi 21 novembre 2008 à 12:28 +0100, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski a écrit : > On Friday, 21 November 2008 at 11:34, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > > But anyway you're invited like everyone else on the list to review, > > comment on and complete the current font packaging guideline change > > proposal on > > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Fonts_packaging_automation > > It looks mostly sane (I applied some grammar and punctuation fixes, I hope > you don't mind), Thank you for the review and the fixes, I don't mind at all, quite the contrary, you're very welcome. Please post any remarks you may have about the packages themselves, that's where the long-term value is. > but I don't like the naming of "rpm-fonts-filesystem". This > has nothing to do with rpm itself, hence it shouldn't look like a subpackage > of rpm. Instead, I suggest "fonts-filesystem". I fear that by the time I had written the macros, templates, specs, wiki pages, and all, my inspiration had quite dried out. I don't like rpm-fonts much, but I feel fonts would be too generic a name for the base package. If anyone has great naming ideas, I'm all ears. -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Re: where's the wish list for F11?
by Nicolas Mailhot 21 Nov '08

21 Nov '08

Le vendredi 21 novembre 2008 à 10:40 +0100, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski a écrit : > On Friday, 21 November 2008 at 03:07, sean darcy wrote: > [...] > > First, I'm a great yum fan. And you are the man. No irony or sarcasm. > > > > But... I use a lot of 3rd party fonts that aren't open, like most > > designers. It's weird/strange/peculiar there's no system-config-fonts > > that would allow us to install them. > > This calls for some font2spec script that'd create a spec file for your > font and let you build a package from it easily, much like R2spec or > cpan2rpm. R2spec or cpan2rpm work by converting existing metadata. Raw font files do not have the kind of metadata which could be used to generate complete spec files. You have significant packager involvment to fill the info that wouldn't be there otherwise. But anyway you're invited like everyone else on the list to review, comment on and complete the current font packaging guideline change proposal on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Fonts_packaging_automation -- Nicolas Mailhot

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FWN article on web font surveys
by Nicolas Mailhot 20 Nov '08

20 Nov '08

Hi, Now that: 1. Fedora 10 has a significative font complement 2. Fedora 10 has a working openjdk java plugin 3. Linux has enough market share web designers care a little about us I'd like someone at FWN to write a simple article asking our users to participate in the online font surveys out there on Fedora 10 release http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Linux_fonts_on_the_web_— _CSS_and_font_surveys This way we may limit the number of web sites that only work with Arial or Times New Roman, and make more web designers aware of the fonts actually available on free systems. Sadly I doubt my English is simple and compelling enough for the task. Best regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot

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conf.avail, rpmlint and the FHS
by Nicolas Mailhot 18 Nov '08

18 Nov '08

Hi all, When conf.avail was introduced in fontconfig we at Fedora mostly ignored it and let font packages install their fontconfig rules directly in conf.d http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/FontsSpecTemplate (the exception being the fontconfig package itself who perforce followed the new conventions). Recent events made me revisit this point and try to heal the rift between fontconfig and font packages by following common conventions. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Fonts_spec_template_correctio… In the course of the examination of this guideline change proposal, however, it was identified that conf.avail as currently designed causes our rpmlint package sanity check tool to emit errors. Those errors were ok for Behdad to ignore, but really not ok for general packaging guidelines we want to put into newbie packager hands. The core reason are that since we deploy policy through those fontconfig files, we absolutely do not want users to change them (they're free to un-reference the files in conf.d, or write their own fontconfig rules in different files, but we instruct rpm to stomp on old versions of our files on updates). Since we mark those files as non-modifiable (%config and not %config(noreplace) in rpm speak) rpmlint considers them as data, not configuration, and complains of their location under /etc. After thinking a bit about it I feel rpmlint is right — since we don't let users modify our fontconfig files they're not dynamic configuration, just static data users can choose to activate or not. We could of course add an exception in rpmlint just for conf.avail, but I'd rather have fontconfig be fixed to follow more closely the FHS. Exceptions ultimately pile on till you have a lot of cruft to clean up which is not my definition of fun. Can conf.avail and its contents be moved in /usr/share/something in the next version of fontconfig? See also: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Minutes/20081021 Regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot

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New Fedora fonts packaging guidelines
by Nicolas Mailhot 18 Nov '08

18 Nov '08

Hi, After several public and private discussions, I'm now formally proposing http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Fonts_packaging_automation for approval by FPC. Behdad Esfahbod and Jens Petersen have kindly reviewed this proposal and agree with it. Best regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot

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fonts November 2008