[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#962478: fonts-firacode: Provide TTF instead of OTF font files. The former embed hinting instructions and thus are rendered sharper on (low-res) screens.

Salim B slim-b at pm.me
Mon Jun 8 16:01:10 BST 2020


Package: fonts-firacode
Version: 2+dfsg1-1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

More information about this issue can be found in the official FiraCode bug tracker: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/issues/939

The FiraCode author explicitly states[1]:

> I think at some point OTF was superior to TTF, but now they are mostly the same. The difference between OTF and TTF is that TTF can embed hinting instructions, which are essential for rendering on low-res displays.

Therefore I think it would *really* make sense to switch to the TTF variant of the font since it's mainly intended for "on-screen" usage anyway (in contrast to print) and thus sharp rendering is very important.

Kind regards,
Salim Brüggemann

[1]: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/issues/939#issuecomment-640665878

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers focal-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'focal-updates'), (500, 'focal-security'), (500, 'focal'), (100, 'focal-backports')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.4.0-33-generic (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=de_DE:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled


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