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Home > Archive > Debian Developers > February 2006 > TrueType fonts packages maintenance team proposal
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TrueType fonts packages maintenance team proposal
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| Christian Perrier 2006-02-20, 2:48 am |
| Preamble
--------
The maintenance of fonts, at least TTF fonts, is currently splitted
out among many maintainers in the project, while the problems faced by
TTF font package maintainers are nearly always the same.
From my own recent experience of helping/sponsoring/taking over a few
font packages, I have concluded that some coordination between font
packages maintainers could be an interesting improvement for the
project.
So, I hereby propose to think about a possible TTF fonts packaging
team.
Project goals
-------------
The first goal for this team would be setting up a font packaging
policy. Font packages are usually very simple packages, but having a
common packaging style would greatly help incorporating new fonts in
Debian. Usually, people who request the packaging of fonts are not
often very experienced people and that would help smoothing this
learning curve.
Having a common maintenance team would also optimize the usage of
"resources", namely font experts, who are not that common.
My personal vision of this is having the font maintenance team slowly
becoming the maintainer of more and more ttf-* font packages, with the
agreement of the original maintainers, of course. Those would then
remain as "main maintainer" by being listed in the font "Uploaders"
field.
The team could also seek for more fonts to be included in Debian,
possibly after setting up some prerequisites to avoid too crappy fonts.
The project could also include the maintenance of font-related tools,
such as fontforge or defoma (which seems mostly abandoned, but
probably requires solid knowledge or PERL and cryptic
programming...:-)).
Project resources
-----------------
For this, I imagine setting up a maintenance team, with common resources:
- a dedicated project on Alioth, with a common SVN repository
- a mailing list hosted on lists.debian.org
Then, I propose contacting the ttf-* font packages maintainers and
propose them to join the team, explaining that this is a volunteer
action anyway and they will remain as the "main" maintainer of their
packages.
Next steps
----------
The first step is trying to see whether this proposal receives
interest, by my fellow Debian developers, as well as font packages
maintainers (several of them not being yet a DD).
So, please follow up in -devel to show interest, criticism, laughs
and the like.
I do not intend to keep the "lead" of this very long, mostly because
I'm not really a font expert. But, at least until a strong team
emerges, I can give some time in coordinating the whole stuff and
slowly gather the current font packages maintainers.
I have voluntarily limited the scope of the project to TTF fonts,
which become more an more popular. This is mostly by ignorance and
because of my loose knowledge of other font systems. Feel free to
propose a wider project (but not too much wide, also: having a first
limited focus is probably more realistic).
Please feel free to point me at existing projects I wouldn't be aware
of (debian-desktop?) which cover similar goals...
List of current ttf-* packages
------------------------------
(just looking at the packages descriptions give a good idea of the
non-coordination of font packaging..:-)))
ttf-arhangai - A TrueType font with Mongolian Cyrillic letters
ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp - "AR PL Mingti2L Big5" Chinese TrueType font by ArphicTechnology
ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp - "AR PL SungtiL GB" Chinese TrueType font by Arphic Technology
ttf-arphic-gkai00mp - "AR PL KaitiM GB" Chinese TrueType font by Arphic Technology
ttf-baekmuk - Baekmuk series TrueType fonts
ttf-dustin - Various TrueType fonts from dustismo.com
ttf-f500 - Wipeout 3 Font
ttf-isabella - The Isabella free TrueType font
ttf-kochi-gothic - Kochi Subst Gothic Japanese TrueType font without naga10
ttf-kochi-mincho - Kochi Subst Mincho Japanese TrueType font without naga10
ttf-sazanami-gothic - Sazanami Gothic Japanese TrueType font
ttf-sazanami-mincho - Sazanami Mincho Japanese TrueType font
ttf-staypuft - The Stay-Puft free TrueType font
ttf-summersby - Free TrueType typeface font
ttf-thryomanes - A Unicode font covering Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and IPA
ttf-tmuni - font for Tibetan, Dzongkha and Ladakhi (OpenType Unicode)
ttf-uralic - Truetype fonts for Cyrillic-based Uralic languages
ttf-kochi-gothic-naga10 - Kochi Subst Gothic Japanese TrueType font with naga10 (non-free)
ttf-kochi-mincho-naga10 - Kochi Subst Mincho Japanese TrueType font with naga10 (non-free)
ttf-mikachan - handwritten Japanese Truetype font
libfont-ttf-perl - PERL module for TrueType font hacking
libttf-dev - FreeType 1 development files (static library and headers)
ttf-alee - A Lee's EunJin family Hangul truetype fonts
ttf-arabeyes - Arabeyes GPL TrueType Arabic fonts
ttf-arphic-bkai00mp - "AR PL KaitiM Big5" Chinese TrueType font by Arphic Technology
ttf-arphic-ukai - "AR PL ZenKai Uni" Chinese Unicode TrueType font Kaiti style
ttf-arphic-uming - "AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni" Chinese Unicode TrueType font Mingti style
ttf-bengali-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for the Bengali language
ttf-bitstream-vera - The Bitstream Vera family of free TrueType fonts
ttf-bpg-georgian-fonts - BPG Georgian fonts
ttf-dejavu - Bitstream Vera fonts with additional characters
ttf-devanagari-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for languages using the Devanagari script
ttf-farsiweb - FarsiWeb free TrueType Farsi fonts
ttf-freefont - Freefont Serif, Sans and Mono Truetype fonts
ttf-gujarati-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for the Gujarati language
ttf-indic-fonts - Metapackage for free Indian language fonts
ttf-junicode - a Unicode font for medievalists (Latin, IPA and Runic)
ttf-kacst - KACST free TrueType Arabic fonts
ttf-kannada-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for the Kannada language
ttf-khmeros - KhmerOS Unicode fonts for the Khmer language of Cambodia
ttf-malayalam-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for the Malayalam language
ttf-mgopen - Magenta Open Truetype fonts
ttf-mph-2b-damase - font with ranges from the latest version of unicode
ttf-opensymbol - The OpenSymbol TrueType font
ttf-oriya-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for the Oriya language
ttf-paktype - PakType free OpenType Urdu fonts
ttf-punjabi-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for the Punjabi language
ttf-tamil-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for the Tamil language
ttf-telugu-fonts - Free TrueType fonts for the Telugu language
ttf-unfonts - Un series Korean TrueType fonts
ttf-gentium - Gentium TrueType font
ttf-larabie-deco - Decorative fonts from www.larabiefonts.com
ttf-larabie-straight - Straight fonts from www.larabiefonts.com
ttf-larabie-uncommon - Special decorative fonts from www.larabiefonts.com
ttf-xfree86-nonfree - non-free TrueType fonts from XFree86
ttf-xfree86-nonfree-syriac - non-free syriac OpenType fonts from XFree86
--
| |
| Paul Wise 2006-02-20, 2:48 am |
| On Mon, 2006-02-20 at 07:40 +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> So, please follow up in -devel to show interest, criticism, laughs
> and the like.
As maintainer (non-DD) of the following two fonts, I think this is a
great idea.
> ttf-khmeros - KhmerOS Unicode fonts for the Khmer language of Cambodia
> ttf-mph-2b-damase - font with ranges from the latest version of unicode
There are a few other fonts I'd like to see in Debian (another Khmer
one, and a few Burmese Unicode ones).
It might be good to write a font policy (if one does not exist), with
suggested package names and standards for package descriptions,
dependencies and the like.
We should also ensure that all the fonts packages have correct debtags.
We could also search for binary packages that duplicate font files
instead of depending on them (even tho there are lintian warnings).
> Please feel free to point me at existing projects I wouldn't be aware
> of (debian-desktop?) which cover similar goals...
I also think that this project has a bit in common with debian-i18n,
perhaps they could be informed too?
--
bye,
pabs
http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
| |
| Mohammed Adnène Trojette 2006-02-20, 7:48 am |
| On Mon, Feb 20, 2006, Christian Perrier wrote:
> ttf-arabeyes - Arabeyes GPL TrueType Arabic fonts
> ttf-kacst - KACST free TrueType Arabic fonts
> ttf-paktype - PakType free OpenType Urdu fonts
I am maintaining those three, and would really be happy to know what are
the other maintainers best practices in maintaining fonts.
As I am not a big font expert too, such a team will be a way to learn a
lot. To sum up, count me in!
--
adn
Mohammed Adnène Trojette
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| Frank Küster 2006-02-20, 5:55 pm |
| Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> wrote:
> The first goal for this team would be setting up a font packaging
> policy.=20
[...]
> I have voluntarily limited the scope of the project to TTF fonts,
> which become more an more popular. This is mostly by ignorance and
> because of my loose knowledge of other font systems. Feel free to
> propose a wider project (but not too much wide, also: having a first
> limited focus is probably more realistic).
I'd be glad if you'd keep the Debian TeX Task Force (currently at
debian-tetex-maint@l.d.o, soon at debian-tex-maint@l.d.o) informed about
drafts of this policy. Although we don't currently package any TTF
fonts, pdftex can in principle use them (as well as PostScript Type1
fonts and, to a still limited extend, OTF). Unfortunately, it has
rather specific requirements with respect to file placement and even
naming. It would be nice if we'd manage to keep the needed setup
(symlink farms...) as simple as possible.
Regards, Frank
--=20
Frank K=FCster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Z=
=FCrich
Debian Developer (teTeX)
| |
| Rene Engelhard 2006-02-20, 5:55 pm |
| Christian Perrier wrote:
> List of current ttf-* packages
> ------------------------------
> (just looking at the packages descriptions give a good idea of the
> non-coordination of font packaging..:-)))
[...]
> ttf-opensymbol - The OpenSymbol TrueType font
built from OOo...
Regards,
Rene
| |
| Daniel Baumann 2006-02-20, 5:55 pm |
| Beeing the new ttf-bitstream-vera maintainer, I have the same opinion as
to other 'team-maintenance-proposals': As long as the package itself is
not as complicated as I could not been handled well by one person, I
don't like the 'team'-idea - it's unecessary overhead for me.
Let's write a fontpackages sub-policy instead, and let it up to the
people to decide how they want to maintain their packages.
(Sorry, if this sounds a bit harsh, but it's not ment as an offence, and
I appreciate your initiative).
--
Address: Daniel Baumann, Burgunderstrasse 3, CH-4562 Biberist
Email: daniel.baumann@panthera-systems.net
Internet: http://people.panthera-systems.net/~daniel-baumann/
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| Marcus Better 2006-02-20, 5:55 pm |
| Christian Perrier wrote:
> I have voluntarily limited the scope of the project to TTF fonts,
> which become more an more popular.
Perhaps the PostScript fonts in Debian could use some attention as well.
I've been trying to package a very simple php library which in the upstream
version includes copies of the "standard" Adobe fonts (Courier, Times
etc). It turns out that these fonts are included in various Debian
packages, but unfortunately they don't make them available to other
applications in a uniform manner (especially not if you want to preserve
the association between .pfa and .afm files).
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| Jaldhar H. Vyas 2006-02-20, 5:55 pm |
| On Mon, 20 Feb 2006, Daniel Baumann wrote:
> Let's write a fontpackages sub-policy instead, and let it up to the
> people to decide how they want to maintain their packages.
>
Christian, I have to agree with Daniel here. We don't really need joint
maintenance but coordination on font policy would be a good idea. (Also if
someone could explain just how the heck defoma is supposed to work...)
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar@debian.org>
La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/
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| Will Newton 2006-02-20, 5:55 pm |
| On Monday 20 February 2006 06:40, Christian Perrier wrote:
> The project could also include the maintenance of font-related tools,
> such as fontforge or defoma (which seems mostly abandoned, but
> probably requires solid knowledge or PERL and cryptic
> programming...:-)).
As several people have noticed, the FreeType packages in Debian could do with
some serious love that I do not have time to give. There are several issues
in the BTS that are issues with either fonts or FreeType's rendering of a
particular font, so it would be useful to get font maintainers actively
involved with maintenance of this package.
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| Adrian von Bidder 2006-02-20, 5:55 pm |
| | |
| Christian Perrier 2006-02-21, 2:50 am |
| Quoting Jaldhar H. Vyas (jaldhar@debian.org):
>
> Christian, I have to agree with Daniel here. We don't really need joint
> maintenance but coordination on font policy would be a good idea. (Also if
> someone could explain just how the heck defoma is supposed to work...)
I actually have no intent to enforce this to people who prefer
maintaining the package they maintain alone.
My current view is more having a common place for package maintenance
(for maintainers who want to join), possibly with "sub-places" for
packages which have joined this "loose team". There, each package
maintainer would have to choice to either be the only responsible
person for the package (aka be "Maintainer" and "Uploader"
alone)....or give precedence to the team...or whatever combination.
Again, no enforcement for anyone to join the team and the packaging
policy would then be more a set of guidelines rather than an enforced
policy such as other packaging policies.
As you mention, Jaldhar, there are a few things related to font
packaging which are not obvious to people who package fonts. "defoma"
is among these....and fontforge os probably another one. So the team
could also be a good place for font maintainers to share their
experience and maybe also benefit from a wider experience by epople
who have a good knowledge of such deep technical stuff.
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| Christian Perrier 2006-02-21, 2:50 am |
| > I'd be glad if you'd keep the Debian TeX Task Force (currently at
> debian-tetex-maint@l.d.o, soon at debian-tex-maint@l.d.o) informed about
> drafts of this policy. Although we don't currently package any TTF
Of course....Actually, I see some difference between TTF fonts which
most common use are desktop environments and Type1 fonts, which use is
more specialized (correct me if I say stupid things, I'm far from
having good knowledge of all this...which is actually one of the
motivations for a team...:-))
So, unless some good arguments come up, this team and "loose policy"
would then be limited to TTF fonts....but of course, the TSF will be
kept posted (will try to remember crosspositing for a next
announcement).
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| Miles Bader 2006-02-21, 2:50 am |
| Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> writes:
> Of course....Actually, I see some difference between TTF fonts which
> most common use are desktop environments and Type1 fonts, which use is
> more specialized
>From a user point of view, TTF and Type1 fonts are essentially the same;
they both work well for typical desktop use in debian.
[Maybe in the past there were differences due to e.g. the different
hinting strategies, but these days freetype seems to handle both equally
well. I don't know whether windows/macos are similarly advanced.]
-Miles
--
..Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
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| Frank Küster 2006-02-21, 7:50 am |
| Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> wrote:
>
>
> Of course....Actually, I see some difference between TTF fonts which
> most common use are desktop environments and Type1 fonts, which use is
> more specialized (correct me if I say stupid things, I'm far from
> having good knowledge of all this...which is actually one of the
> motivations for a team...:-))
I guess the difference is more in the historic development than in
actual technical differences. You can easily use Type1 fonts under X11
if they are registered to defoma; I don't know about Openoffice and
friends.=20
On the other hand, as I said, pdftex can use TTF fonts, too. That's why
I think we should coordinate a bit.
Regards, Frank
--=20
Frank K=FCster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Z=
=FCrich
Debian Developer (teTeX)
| |
| Florent Rougon 2006-02-21, 7:50 am |
| Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:
> I guess the difference is more in the historic development than in
> actual technical differences. You can easily use Type1 fonts under X11
> if they are registered to defoma; I don't know about Openoffice and
> friends.
OpenOffice.org can use Latin Modern (which is in Type 1 format in
Debian). I'm pretty sure it is because it uses fontconfig (and because
defoma makes fonts available to fontconfig).
--
Florent
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