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Author duplicates of fonts in some packages
Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo

2005-03-29, 6:22 pm

Hello.

I'm packaging adesklets stuff, and it cames with Vera.ttf font included.
We've got this font in ttf-bitstream-vera package, so I was wondering if is
it ok to duplicate it, since some packages are doing it already.

At least that's something what I got after `apt-file search Vera.ttf`.
wesnoth-data and epplets are not a case cause they using symlink to the
font from ttf-bitstream-vera and depend on it.

But widelands-data has its own copy. In addition its copyright file doesn't
mention about different license for this font than for the rest of package.

I assume that symlink is a good way (tm) for such situations, and that
widelands is buggy, but I'm here to ensure myself and maybe others ;)

Also maybe writing some script for finding such duplicates would be
reasonable, it could in addition finds conflicting files in other packages,
but that's only idea ;)

regards
fEnIo

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Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt

2005-03-29, 6:22 pm

Nikita V. Youshchenko

2005-03-29, 6:22 pm



> Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo <fenio@debian.org> writes:
>
> A symlink and a dependency is better.


It is even better to make package independent of particular font.

E.g. I try to avoid having vera font installed on all machines I control,
because some applications, such as OpenOffice, try to use vera for
interface if it is available, and display garbage in russian locale bacause
this font does not have cyrillic glyphs.


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Alban Browaeys

2005-03-30, 7:55 am

Le Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:45:01 +0200, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo a écrit :

> Hello.
>
> I'm packaging adesklets stuff, and it cames with Vera.ttf font included.
> We've got this font in ttf-bitstream-vera package, so I was wondering if is
> it ok to duplicate it, since some packages are doing it already.
>
> At least that's something what I got after `apt-file search Vera.ttf`.
> wesnoth-data and epplets are not a case cause they using symlink to the
> font from ttf-bitstream-vera and depend on it.
>
> But widelands-data has its own copy. In addition its copyright file doesn't
> mention about different license for this font than for the rest of package.
>
> I assume that symlink is a good way (tm) for such situations, and that
> widelands is buggy, but I'm here to ensure myself and maybe others ;)
>
> Also maybe writing some script for finding such duplicates would be
> reasonable, it could in addition finds conflicting files in other packages,
> but that's only idea ;)



It looks like a use case for defoma. You can register font or appplication
to defoma which then provide some kinds of fonts to the application (dfontmgr
provide a visual view on that).
This is used for example by ghostrcipt (the print core) .

Maybe fontconfig could be used too (though it is only a font registrar).



I don't think a recommand to the wanted font package would hurt.
However font should not be in application package. There is no font policy
per se but at least the policy have a short notice about font usable by
the X system being packaged separately (i don't know to which extend
this apply here).

Well i really hope i would have definitive guidelines about that,
My opinion (i am not even DD) is that this is a good practice : fonts are
updated and have bugs. I prefer having people who care about fonts
maintaining them. (it would be like having the usefull man pages in
unrelated packages ... well some does it too


Regards
Alban



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