[Pkg-fonts-devel] New release: GNU FreeFont

[Steve White]

Davide,

I have to question the interpretation of some of the policies being
applied here.

The purpose in building executables from source is primarily for
platform independence.
But the font files are meant to be already platform-independent.

If someone wants to obtain the (open-source) program and edit the
descriptions and re-build the fonts, they can, but I see no reason for
the distribution to do this.

By way of analogy, suppose the system had pictures, say png icons,
that were built from some third-party description file using some
open-source graphics program.  Would Debian then be obliged to build
the png files from the description files?  Or can it not simply
include the (platform-independent) png files and include a README
explaining where the descriptions and their editor can be obtained?

I don't understand the rationale for the distribution building the
fonts from the SFD descriptions *at all*.

Moreover,

We are talking about the stable release here, aren't we?   Otherwise,
my gosh, so much fuss and delay over--what?  The point of the stable
and testing releases is to work out wrinkles just like this.

Cheers!

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 10:40 AM, Davide Viti <zinosat at tiscali.it> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
>
>  On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 10:20:24AM +0100, Steve White wrote:
>  > Davide (et al.),
>  >
>  > FreeFont can't go back.  The FontForge currently in the Debian
>  > distribution is just too old and cranky.  Besides, it would be wrong
>  > in principle to do so.  We are trying to PROgress here, not REgress.
>
>  Debian packages follow upstream "flow": the problem here is that I should
>  have noticed the breakage before asking Christian to upload the broken
>  package; I could then wait for an upgrade of FontForge before moving on.
>
>  There's nothing wrong on your side and I guess nobody would ask you to go
>  back to the old format.
>
>  I've just added a reference to this problem to an already existing updaade
>  request:
>
>  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=472772
>
>  I just hope the update will happen soon.
>
>  regards,
>  Davide
>
>
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