[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 91886] Make font installation optional

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91886

--- Comment #23 from Mike Kaganski <mikekaganski at hotmail.com> ---
(In reply to Adolfo Jayme from comment #16)
> The Noto fonts have precious value for us because they give us wide language
> support.

(In reply to Jean-Francois Nifenecker from comment #22)
> Some notes WRT the Source* fonts.
> 
> These fonts are good quality ones: they provide multiple weight variants
> which give a better result than software changes (change font instead of
> selecting the software rendered bold, for instance). Granted, they lack the
> italics rendering.
> 
> What the LibreOffice project should provide is a set of such high quality
> fonts: a set of fonts with separate weighted fonts (multiple levels) and
> italic fonts.

I don't buy this reasoning. Who should provide "a set of such high quality
fonts", e.g. with "wide language support", is font forges that create the
fonts. LibreOffice project should provide a tool that may use any fonts on the
system, be it "high quality" or not (very subjective); it's up to user to
decide if user wants "wide language support" or only their spoken language; if
they need fonts with Graphite features or some dumb fonts, etc.

Only one thing matters here: if a font is required for proper functioning of
the software itself. A font which absence makes software broken is a required
resource, and as such must be available unconditionally. (FTR: in case of
OpenSumbol, tdf#128226 had made it available locally in LibreOffice, without
the need to install system-wide). Otherwise, if the font is not required to
make LibreOffice functional, the font needs to be unconditionally excluded.

It's OK to keep some kind of knowledge base (wiki?) with some suggestions of
"good" (in the eye of beholder) fonts for different tasks (quality?
multi-language? features? open-sourcedness?). Point from there to the
corresponding resources/vendors who provide them on their respective terms.

I suppose that a very narrow set of fonts may be actually required for us.
Given that interoperability is very important thing for LibreOffice, and
problems of layout of documents created using different major office suites is
always considered by users as bugs, we *must* provide the fonts created
specifically for the task of interoperability (Liberation + C-fonts)
unconditionally (their use is hard-coded in substitution tables) ... but then,
we must realize that on Windows (versions that we support, i.e. Win7+), the
required original fonts (TNR/Arial/Courier/Cambria/Calibri/...) are already
guaranteed to be present, so fonts to substitute these are not required on that
platform even for that reason.

This leads to the need of very strict rules regarding use of fonts in bundled
templates - because I agree (partially) with comment 20 wrt the questionable
requirement of font based on its use in a template. (But otherwise, that
comment is funny: it calls "elitist attitude" what is not that: there is no "we
know more about what should be on your computer that you do", there should only
be "we know more about what is *required for our program* that you do", which
is perfectly OK - but the comment itself shows "elitist attitude" by asserting
"I know what you must do - e.g., put your effort into testing of additional
configurations instead of, say, fixing bugs, better than you do").

And so, distributing as much templates as extensions as possible is reasonable,
which should enable to have their extension pages with the information (with
links) to the used fonts, so a user decided themselves what to install
system-wide.

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