[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#609094: Bug#609094: fontforge: Fails to build ttf-dejavu

Khaled Hosny khaledhosny at eglug.org
Tue Jan 18 11:26:47 UTC 2011


On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 12:07:20PM +0100, Julien Cristau wrote:
> On Thu, Jan  6, 2011 at 21:27:11 +0200, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 08:13:28PM -0800, Daniel Schepler wrote:
> > > Package: fontforge
> > > Version: 0.0.20100501-4
> > > Severity: serious
> > 
> > Bugs like this make wounder if it is wise for distributions to build
> > fonts from source instead of just using upstream supplied font files.
> > 
> > I mean, what is the benefit from building from source? I, as a font
> > author, I can see many possible problems with no obvious benefit.
> > 
> If we didn't build from source, we wouldn't catch bugs like this.

Which is good thing?

I mean the purpose of font packages is to be used, not catch FontForge
bugs, and there are FontForge bugs that can pass unnoticed at build
time.

See also:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=600306

for a non-bug that just screwed the font up. Another reason why it is
not, yet, a good idea to build fonts on your own.

(BTW, it is already known that there are places in the code that don't
go well with doubles and crashes like this have been reported upstream
already, still there are certain tasks that can't be reliably done
without building fontforge to use doubles).

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-fonts-devel/attachments/20110118/00c51861/attachment.pgp>


More information about the Pkg-fonts-devel mailing list