[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#472830: Bug#472830: Bug#472830: ttf-freefont: Fonts do not contain any character glyphs.

[Davide Viti]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 09:50:43PM +0100, Davide Viti wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 06:19:55PM +0000, Paul Martin wrote:
> > Package: ttf-freefont
> > Version: 20080323-1
> > Severity: grave
> > Justification: renders package unusable
> > 
> > Running "waterfall" on FreeSerif, FreeSans and FreeMono shows only blank 
> > squares for ttf-freefont 20080323-1. Reverting to 20060501cvs-12 cures 
> > this.
> > 
> > The fact that 20060501cvs-12 is 1802kB in size, but 20080323-1 is merely 
> > 274kB might have something to do with it.
> > 
> 
> I'm pretty ebarassed about this!
> tried to open the source sfd files with fontforge and I can't see any glyph, so the
> problem is not just with generated ttf file.
> Here's a snipped of a conversation about this which took place on #dejavu
> 
> <+eimai> same problem here
> <+eimai> did george change his sfd format again?
> <+eimai> SplineSet, I can't remember seeing that in old sfd files
> <+eimai> it appears that SplineSet isn't in older sfd files, comes after "Fore", don't know what it means or why it should create problems
> <+eimai> strange enough, EndSplineSet is in the older sfd format
> <+eimai> I'd say: upgrade FF again and open the files again, should then work I guess and generate proper ttf files
> <+eimai> after that: go moan against george that he should warn about breakage in his sfd format :-p
> <+eimai> don't know, my version can't handle it, I guess just go to current svn

I've spent some time trying to figure out which version of fontforge should be used to fix this;
the fontforge changelog [1] was not very helpful; I found this in the freefont changelog instead:

2008-02-17  Steve White
	* sfd/*.sfd: committed to FontForge Spline Font Database (SFD) 2
	format.

this makes me think the Debian version of FF (0.0.20080203-1) missed that feature just for a few days.
I noticed there's already a request for an update (#472772)


regards,
Davide

[1] http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/changelog.html
[2] http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/freefont/ChangeLog?revision=1.248&root=freefont&view=markup
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