[Debian-in-workers] Draft for ttf-indic-fonts restructuring

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Vasudev Kamath said on Sat, May 14, 2011 at 01:24:53PM +0530,:

 > I have asked for the opinions for renaming of ttf-indic-fonts
 > before on this list but with no reply (I got reply only from
 > bubulle :)). So this time I'm proposing a draft plan for renaming /
 > restructuring of ttf-indic-fonts.

It is not because nobody is interested. At least it was not so, in my case.

 > pkg-fonts has a new policy (drafting in progress) for the font
 > packages for Wheezy. In short following are the main points

See?? Is it right to change the names only because some change in
policy is coming up?  What if the changes are not accepted? 

IIRC, there was some mention that the changes would not happen. 

 > 1. Fonts will be named as fonts-[foundry]-name, here foundry will
 > be name of author or company maintaining the font. After a long
 > discussion it was decided to make foundry as optional. so in short
 > new fonts will have name in the format fonts-name

So, all lohit fonts will come under one package? And each of ML fonts
wil have a package of its own?

Rest is pure user POV; please tell me if others expect / experience
things differently.

Right now, for me, I install ttf-malayalam-fonts and
ttf-devanagari-fonts (for Indic), because I know that is all I will
require; but when I do the install for others, I install the
ttf-indic-fonts metapackage.

Installing ttf-<lang>-fonts package gives me all families (serif,
sans-serif etc) of fonts in that language, without much hassle. I
recognise that with more DFSG-free fonts becoming available, we will
have better freedom in repackaging them; but right now, I see no
reason to.

 > 2. deprecating defoma. Its decided to remove all the dependencies on
 > defoma (Debian font manager) in Wheezy.

What does that mean from the user POV? 

 > Now coming to ttf-indic-fonts, its a meta package (multiple source
 > in single? or whatever I don't know how to describe it properly its

A metapackage depends on other packages; by itself, that package
contains nothing. .

 > complex :)) and debian-in itself is the upstream!. But there are
 > fonts in the package which do have a valid upstream and have
 > periodic releases, and this is really painful for maintainer who
 > needs to keep track of individual fonts version and periodically
 > check for updates!  If you don't believe me check this file in
 > wsvn[1]. I had to manually go to each font file to find its
 > upstream and versions.

Isn't that a problem with (previous) packaging practise? 

All meta-packages will obviously have Debian as "upstream". For
example, you are unlikely to find an application called
"gnome-desktop-environment" on the GNOME project. (errr... unless they
have incorporated the debian/ files upstream).

If ttf-foo-font has described Debian (or this list) as upstream, it is
a packaging problem.

And yes, every time a new upstream release happens, the maintainer
does have to include the newer release in the package, (else people
like me will file bug reports asking for packaging the latest release
...)

 > So here is my suggestion lets seperate out all the fonts with valid
 > upstream into their own source packages. Below is the fonts which do

AFAICT, all fonts have valid upstream. 

 > have valid upstream
 > 1. All the Lohit fonts (maintained by RedHat)
 > 2. All Malayalam fonts except lohit (maintained by SMC)
 > 3. Akar Gujarathi fonts (maintained by Kartik?)

Curious, how do you propose to deal with lohit-malayalam? 


 > So here is the plan each individual lohit fonts for a language goes
 > to its own package say fonts-lohit-language? Suggestions are welcome.

aaaaaarghhhhh!!!!!

It is already a pain having to go through the zillions of fonts under
the fonts listing in aptitude. Add to it the pain of having to search
for random fonts under xorg and all random listings. 

 > At the top level there will be fonts-lohit meta package which depends
 > on all the individual fonts-lohit-language package. Please do comment
 > on this.

Ok. Ok.

How about this:-

1. A package for each font - means a separate package for language
   from same source.

2. A meta-package for each source/upstream, 

3. A meta-package for each language.

4. A grandmother emtapackage for ttf-indic-fonts which depends on all
   metapackages in #3?

 > About fonts maintained by SMC: I think we can either have a single
 > package by name fonts-smc or do we need to package individual fonts
 > separately and have fonts-smc as meta package? (SMC members please
 > give your suggestions.)

It is a package deal. (pun unintended)

Treat SMC with same way you will deal with lohit. 

Disclaimer - I am not a member of SMC. 

 > Now remains the fonts without proper upstream how do we deal with
 > them? I'm open for suggestions here.

Please mention - I am not very familiar with other languages. 

I suspect you mean one of "not maintained by upstream" or "upstream
untreacable" or "upstream not willing to fix bugs"?


(snip here)

 > pkg-ruby-extras team i.e having transitional packages which will
 > depend on new packages and which can be slowly removed from debian
 > archive later.

A more tricky question:-

If I install foo-font; how will the system deal with other fonts
installed by ttf-blah-fonts?

Still more tricky situation:-

I installed ttf-indic-fonts.

Now, I install foo-font. What happens to foo.ttf (apt and friends will
complain about foo.ttf being in 2 packages). Things can get still more
complicated if foo.ttf is put in different locations, both available
to user in multiple versions. 

Supplementary question - does the new packaging policy entail location
other thatn /usr/share/fonts/ ??

What about 

/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-<lang>-font directories on older
systems?

Hope you get the issue. 

 > Well this is my draft plan, lets start a discussion on this and once
 > everything is finalised we can start working on new packages.

Of course, my opinion only. 

-- 
Mahesh T. Pai   ||
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance,
it is the illusion of knowledge."
--Stephen hawking