[Pkg-fonts-devel] Packaging teh Conakry font for Debian/Ubuntu

[Nicolas Spalinger]

Christian Perrier wrote:
> Hello Michael,
> 
> The Debian/Ubuntu fonts packaging team is considering the packaging of
> the Conakry font you designed, as a .deb file included in the
> distributions so that users don't have to install it manually as you
> describe on http://www.evertype.com/fonts/nko/
> 
> The packaging of the font is easy. However, when we package fonts, wo
> generally try to have the package buildable and, therefore, we
> generally prefer building from the FontForge .sfd files when they're
> available.

It is really up to the upstream author to release and publicly provide
as much of a buildpath and extended sources as he wishes besides the
final fonts themselves.

If these are available, then we work on Debianizing them, but we need to
be able to reproduce very closely the final result so as to respect the
work's artistic integrity, something which isn't so easy depending of
the complexity of the font.

Since in this particular case I doubt Michael is using fontforge. We
have to be realistic, a fully reproducable buildpath is a preference and
a goal not a strict requirement.

It is already great to have these fonts under a DFSG-approved license!

With upcoming versions of Fontlab promising to move to more XML-based
open formats this issue will probably get better. Various members of the
open font community are working on it.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves :-)

> That also makes modifications of the font easier if people want to go
> this way (and provided they respect the OFL license, of course).

Including the extended font sources like smart font code is desirable
for possible downstream modifications: some branches may then be of
interest to the upstream author.

> Are such files available for Conakry?

The link to the GDL sources is apparently broken:
http://www.evertype.com/fonts/nko/

But Sharon Correll probably has a copy, I will ask her.

Best regards,

-- 
Nicolas Spalinger, NRSI volunteer
Debian/Ubuntu font teams / OpenFontLibrary
http://planet.open-fonts.org