Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto
On 10 September 2023 2:38:38 am IST, Gunnar Hjalmarsson <gunnarhj@debian.org> wrote:
>Hi!
>
>With fontconfig 2.14, which entered testing last January, upstream fontconfig prefers Noto over DejaVu in /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-latin.conf. The change was not preceded by any discussion I'm aware of. It appears to be related to this Fedora measure:
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>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DefaultToNotoFonts
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>So Debian was kind of caught off guard.
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>My personal view is that it is a change in the right direction, and I have taken a couple of follow-up steps in Debian. There are still loose ends and more work to be done to achieve a consistent configuration in this respect. However, before taking further steps, I feel there is a need to reach out to a broader audience about the change. Hence this message. Basically I'm asking if this move towards Noto is desirable and, if so, I plea for relevant input for the completion of the transition.
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>While this message was crossposted to several mailing lists, since the topic affects multiple packages and teams, I suggest that the replies are posted to the general debian-devel list only.
>
>
>The current situation
>---------------------
>From a Debian POV, the effective default font for sans-serif and serif depends on whether the fonts-noto-core package is installed or not. For some desktop environments that package is pulled by default. As regards the GNOME desktop, fonts-noto-core is not installed by default with Debian 12 stable, but it does get pulled if you install trixie via a weekly build ISO.
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>The change as regards GNOME is probably my fault:
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>https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/5aa10dde
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>While I thought that that commit wouldn't change much in practice, since there typically are other fonts which satisfy the fontconfig-config alternative dependency list, it probably does make a difference since fontconfig is installed early during the installation process.
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>Some bugs were filed early this year, where people expressed some dissatisfaction. The strongest objections were about the change of the monospace font. (fonts-noto-mono is included by default also in Debian 12 stable with GNOME.) So I addressed that in trixie via a Debian level patch which changes the default monospace font back to DejaVu Sans Mono.
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>So at this time we have these preferences in 60-latin.conf:
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>sans-serif Noto Sans
>serif Noto Serif
>monospace DejaVu Sans Mono
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>So far so good. Mostly good IMHO. I can mention that I'm also working with fonts in Ubuntu, and similar changes will happen in Ubuntu 23.10.
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>
>Some steps to consider
>----------------------
>These are some points for consideration I have in mind:
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>* The task-* packages should be reconsidered. At first hand I'm thinking of all the non-latin task-* packages which recommend a particular font. Let's take task-hindi-desktop as an example, which currently recommends fonts-lohit-deva. I think it would be consistent to change that to:
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>Recommends: fonts-noto-core | fonts-lohit-deva
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>fonts-noto-core covers "all" scripts, so with that package installed there shouldn't be a need to install fonts-lohit-deva. (And for many non-latin scripts Noto offers better quality than the other non-latin font packages in the archive.)
For Malayalam, we prefer traditional script font by default. Noto Malayalam coverage is not in traditional script.
>* Maybe it would be motivated to recommend fonts-noto-core in the umbrella package task-desktop too. While fontconfig-config seems to pull fonts-noto-core for new installs, I suspect that it wouldn't be pulled during an upgrade to Debian trixie.
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>* System admins have the option to do "dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config" and that way control some fontconfig symlinks affecting things like hinting and subpixel rendering. As regards the related templates file I recently made a tiny change that appeared to be necessary:
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>https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/45d8eda0
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>but I suspect that the feature may need an overhaul also in other respects if we change the default font.
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>* I've noticed the fonts-recommended bug https://bugs.debian.org/1051314, which rightly points out the need to consider Noto in that context.
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>* Almost 3 years have passed since the fonts-noto source package was last updated from upstream. A new update with latest upstream is desirable.
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>
>Looking forward to your response.
>
--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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