[Pkg-fonts-devel] #1029710: Noto Rashi Hebrew in emacs-gtk

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Hi Tzafrir,

Quoting Tzafrir Cohen (2023-02-13 08:48:52)
> I opened bug #1029710 about Emacs using the font Noto Rashi font for
> Hebrew by default.
> 
> Now, suppose that the basic issue is that this font happens to be
> this first Noto font alphabetically that provides Hebrew code points (or
> whatever).
> 
> I suppose that there are workarounds at various levels for this issue. I
> saw similar issues. For instance, there was an older issue:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2113077
> I think it no longer applies here:
> 
> $ fc-match serif:lang=he
> NotoSansHebrew-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans Hebrew" "Regular"
> 
> (And that was after I removed various other fonts: culmus, freefont and
> linuxlibertine)
> 
> But then: why do I need to work around this issue? Rashi is not a script
> that adds new code points. It is basically a different script of Hebrew:
> Most of the letters are the same, some are somewhat different and a few
> are very different. Why is it needed in the Noto ("no tofu") font?
> 
> Given that fonts-noto-core is typically installed on a desktop system:
> any chance to remove the Rashi fonts from it? Is there a better place to
> ask this question?

If you think it is wrong for the package fonts-noto-core to include
certain font then please file a bugreport against that package.  Given
that the purpose of the Noto project is to cover all of Unicode, I doubt
that I (as maintainer of that package) will agree on that, but possibly
we (me and/or upstream developers of Noto) are missing some details
about hebrew in particular: Therefore: Please file a bugreport against
the package if you suspect that the package is handling somthing wrong.

If you think it is wrong for a common Debian installation to include
fonts-noto-core, then please file a bugreport against packages that
consider it a good idea to pull in that package.  That is not something
we have decided to impose on Debian in general here in the fonts team.
It seems most likely that it was pulled in from either libreoffice or
texlive.  I can imagine the reasoning of the maintainers of each of
those packages to be very different, so again it is better to file a
bugreport against each for a sensibly targeted discussion.

Possibly fontconfig can be made to ship default hinting that deals with
whatever issues you experienced in emacs.  I am no an expert in
fontconfig hinting nor an emacs user, so cannot contribute much to that
discussion.  Again, I think that the discussion will be helped if you
frame a tighter scope by filing a bugreport against fontconfig regarding
that more narrow issue.

(For competeness sake, some people other than me find it an issue that
the packaging of Noto does not offer a Latin1-specific package.  If you
think that the existence of a Latin1-specific package would address
your concerns then I recommend to file a bugreport about that against
src:fonts-noto)


Hope that helps,

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
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