[Pkg-fonts-devel] RFC: new fonts-libertine package available

[Rogério Brito]

Hi, Kess.

2011/10/16 Kess Vargavind <vargavind at gmail.com>:
> I have been using Linux Libertine (O) for years now, mostly in
> XeLaTeX, and am overjoyed that you are packaging the OpenType fonts!

Glad you like it. I am also in love with Linux Libertine. It is, in my
experience, we have few serious options of using "real" modern
OpenType fonts:

* lmodern is a great fallback, OK.
* Khaled Hosny's XITS is OK to have a Times-like look.
* Junicode---I'm not very experienced with this one.
* Linux Libertine, which is the most pleasant-looking for me.

The others are not suitable, from my experience.

Linux Libertine is, in a sense, the Free Software counterpart to
Adobe's Minion Pro, especially now that it has Optical sizes. As I saw
a posting from one of the team members to a newsgroup asking about
what is needed to implement the MATH tables of OpenType, I guess that
we soon can have documents purely typeset in Linux Libertine.

In other words, Linux Libertine is like Minion Pro, except that LL is
alive and Free as in Freedom. :-)

Philipp H. Poll & Co. are doing a really, really quality work here.

> One thought though:
>
> Personally I have not met a need for the Capitals font styles because
> it’s available in the main fonts as OT features (and neither have I
> really needed the Initials, Keyboard, Outline or Shadow styles).

Indeed, the regular font already seems to have the small capitals...

> Would it be possible/preferable to split the more “exotic” fonts in an
> -extra or similarly named package? At the moment I’m disabling those
> styles with Gnome’s font-manager.

Yes, I am planning on splitting the package in the "basic" and in an
extra set that will be recommended. The reason for "recommends" is
that I'm not sure if other software like, say, LibreOffice/AbiWord are
able to take the small caps from the regular font...

I am also planning on separating the sans-serif from the serif ones...

> Many thanks for all of your packaging efforts!

You're welcome, and I'm glad that I am not the only person that cares
for Linux Libertine with regards to XeLaTeX. :)


Regards,

-- 
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFCAAAA
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