[Fontconfig] TTF/OTF packaging thoughts?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le mercredi 23 juillet 2008 à 11:51 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod a écrit :
> On Wed, 2008-07-23 at 10:53 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:

> > 2. I don't know what algorithm fontconfig uses to choose between
> > several formats of the same fonts, or even if its choices are stable.

> It uses the version number to prefer one over the other.  If both have
> the same version, it may not be deterministic, not sure.

That's unfortunately the case we're likely to have.

> > 3. That being said, the right solution would seem to be obvious. Just
> > use TTF only for quadratic fonts, and OTF only for cubic fonts. Long
> > term most fonts will probably be OTF only (given it's a little better
> > than TTF for new fonts).
> 
> No, right solution is OTF for all.

I agree if OTF = OpenType (CCF or not)

> > 4. Unfortunately, Java and OO.o have lots of problems with OpenType
> > CFF fonts
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Known_fonts_and_text_bugs
> > (please comment and vote on the relevant issues to put some pressure
> > on upstream)
> > So shipping only OTF versions is likely not to go well with OO.o users
> 
> Then lets fix OO.o and Java (we have a Free java now).  Don't hold back
> the OTF transition.  There's a reason that OTF is backward compatible.

> Or do you mean "OpenType CFF" when you say OTF?

In my mail OTF = OpenType CCF, TTF = OpenType TTF

OO.o does not support the first one at all.
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=78858
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=43029

It supports the second one badly.
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=78749
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=16032
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=79878

Maybe if you complain to the OO.o guys they'll start to do something
about it. They've certainly not exhibited a lot of enthusiasm so far.

This is a major problem given almost all the fonts we've recently
included or plan to include are OpenType CCF.

> > 5. But not shipping them will annoy other classes of users (TEX users,
> > etc)
> 
> "TrueType OTF" makes everyone happy, doesn't it?

We have at least one TEX user firmly believing in the superiority of
cubic splines (not surprising after the years of Adobe marketing on the
subject) asking to provide a OpenType CCF version of a font we already
ship as OpenType TrueType (and can't drop till the OO.o bugs are fixed)

> > 6. So I guess we probably need to do something like this:
> > - fonts available in TTF and OTF formats have foo-fonts-ttf and
> > foo-fonts-otf subpackages (no base package), unless one format is
> > obviously more complete (more recent version with more fixes or
> > coverage), in which case we only package this version without
> > subpackaging.
> > - the ttf subpackage is only provided if the format is supported
> > upstream (no conversion on our side if upstream does not QA it)
> > - if the font was mono-format before, foo-fonts-ttf obsoletes all the
> > foo-fonts packages till the last known version (but no later)
> > - the two packages own their subdirs if they share them and conflict
> > with each other
> > - when has OO.o fixed its bugs, we make foo-fonts-otf the new
> > foo-fonts package, obsoleting all previous foo-fonts-otf and
> > foo-fonts-ttf packages
> 
> For god's sake no.  Keep it simple.

I really do not like it either. But I don't see how to keep both TTF and
OTF users happy otherwise.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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