[Pkg-fonts-devel] current state and future of liberation-fonts

[pravin.d.s at gmail.com]

On 25 June 2013 13:36, Fabian Greffrath <fabian at greffrath.com> wrote:

> [Sorry for the re-post, I did not know had to subscribe to the Fedora
> list.]
>
> Hello Pravin Satpute et al.,
>
> I am one of the maintainers of the liberation-fonts package in Debian (it
> is called fonts-liberation there [1]) and I am a bit concerned about the
> current state of development and the future of these fonts. I have read
> that the new release 2.00.1 based on Google Crosscore fonts has been
> defered from Fedora 18 because of rendering regressions [2]. However, since
> then development has apparently stopped in the GIT repository [3].
>

As you might have already read. Though Liberation 1.0 and Liberation 2.0
has same outline in source files the difference is the Hinting
instructions. Hinting instructions differ in both. Due to community
preferring old Liberation 1.0 hinting. Decision is made to go with
Liberation 1.0.


>
> Have these rendering regressions been identified? Are they going to get
> addressed in the fonts or in other parts of the font rendering stack?
>

Yes, Regression was identified.
In fact i am also thinking on this line. We have couple of bugs pending
[4][5] in Fedora against Liberation 1.0 to add some more characters. At the
same time the same characters are already available in Liberation 2.0.


Problem is Liberation 1.0 and 2.0 License are incompatible (OFL and
Liberation) so we can't copy Liberation 2.0 huge glyph set to Liberation
1.0.

Option is
1. Tweak/Modify Liberation 2.0 hinting instructions to match Liberation
1.0. That is big task
2. Adding more glyphs to Liberation 1.0, this is also big one.

Presently nothing is happening on this both option.



>
> Will there be another release of the liberation-fonts in the short term or
> have these fonts been defered altogether in favor of another font family?
>

No. Liberation 1.0 is not deferred in favor of other font. Since there is
no alternative font providing same crisp hinting effect and same time have
more glyph coverage. Fedora still uses Liberation 1.0 and if there are any
major bugs upstream is ready to fix and make new releases.

What version of Liberation does Debian ships presently?

[4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=952778
[5] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=953703



[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=885596
> [3] https://git.fedorahosted.org/**git/liberation-fonts.git<https://git.fedorahosted.org/git/liberation-fonts.git>
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