Bug#1028897: fontconfig: wrong name for the Noto monospace font

[Raphaël Halimi]

Le 20/08/2023 à 12:33, Gunnar Hjalmarsson a écrit :
>> So, I just downloaded NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf from its new home [1]
>> (the old repository in the Debian copyright file has been archived),
>> opened it in font-viewer and... Sadly, the spacing is still
>> "Proportional" and not "Monospace" :(
> 
> Thanks for doing that. So we will probably need to live with it for the 
> foreseeable future. And yes, it's a bit sad.

No problem :)

> Anyway, I'm now convinced that the status of Noto Sans Moto motivates a 
> change of the default monospace font in Debian. Well, you and I haven't 
> agreed on what to put there instead, so how about a compromise where we 
> pick both? :)
> 
> https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/6fae069d

As I understand it, this will make fontconfig select DejaVu Sans Mono on 
most desktop installations (since libreoffice depends on both sets), and 
Noto Mono on a handful of installations, namely, minimal installations 
which will have only fonts-noto-{core,mono} installed, and not 
fonts-dejavu-{core,mono}.

Thus, the default font for the "Monospace" alias will depend on the 
installed packages. At least, since Noto Sans Mono is listed after Noto 
Mono, and since they're both shipped by the same package, the latter 
will never be selected, which will fix the core of the problem - huge 
and hard-to-read terminals.

I'm okay with that. Thanks for fixing it :)

> While I still hesitate, since the change affects so many users, I have 
> decided to act. After all we are in the beginning of the trixie 
> development cycle, so there is plenty of time to change it later. By 
> making the change in unstable and testing, we expose it to the users. 
> Many will probably not even notice and some will like it. And if some 
> users disapprove of the change, the broader discussion we haven't had 
> may happen later.

Yes, let's see what users think of the change. I have good hope that 
most people will be satisfied.

> Thanks for your perseverance!

You're welcome :)

Regards,

-- 
Raphaël Halimi