Bug#496070: [ghostscript] opentypefont
On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> wrote:
> Quoting Fabian Greffrath (2013-08-27 07:35:20)
>> There are three slightly different versions of these fonts installed
>> on a Debian system:
>> 1) gsfonts
>> 2) ghostscript [*]
>> 3) texlive-fonts-recommended
>>
>> The gsfonts package contains a fork of the fonts shipped with an
>> earlier version of ghostscript which was extended with cyrilic glyphs.
>> There are, however, claims that the latin range has also been
>> (unintentionally) touched as well. The texlive-fonts-recommended
>> package thus contains the pristine fonts from the ghostscript release
>> that the fonts in the gsfonts package were based on. Finally, the
>> ghostscript package for a long time also carried the cyrilic fork of
>> the fonts - though a different version than the one in the gsfonts
>> package - and reverted back to the original fonts as supplied by URW
>> in the 9.05 release. For the recent 9.09 release the fonts have been
>> updated by a new release of original supplier URW (e.g. fixing the
>> width of one glyph that had to be patched in the texlive set before).
>>
>> The drawback is that ghostscript does not ship the complete set of
>> fonts. They do only ship the .pfb files and are leaving out the .afm
>> metric files that are useless for ghostscript, but necessary for
>> everything else. Fortunately, they are distributing the complete set
>> in http://downloads.ghostscript.com/public/fonts/ .
>>
>> My idea is to package this set of fonts in a fonts-ghostscript
>> package, make ghostscript and texlive-fonts-recommended depend on it,
>> turn gsfonts (and gsfonts-x11, while we are at it) into dummy packages
>> depending on it and providing symlinks. So all users of these fonts
>> could benefit from the latest upstream improvements and would not need
>> to carry around their own slightly modified fork of the fonts. What do
>> you think about it?
You said that tex-gyre are superior font because better maintened, I
will personnally in this case switch directly to tex-gyre as base 35
fonts.
In the worst case, I will offert two package that provide base 35 fonts:
- urw 35
- tex-gyre
and:
- ask a question to use tex-gyre (low priority) with default for new
install yes, for upgrade no
What do you think ?
Bastien
>
> Yes, I noticed your emails about that at the Ghostscript project earlier
> this month, and also seem to recall you raising this IRL in New York.
>
> I don't like how the Ghostscript project stuff lots of things into their
> project. Specifically about the URW++ fonts they lack proper licensing
> - also separately packaged in those zip files. I filed bug#720906 and
> emailed the Ghostscript project about that yesterday.
>
> Those URW++ fonts - now that they are cleaned up - are better tracked
> directly from URW++, in my opinion. Yesterday I sent an email to URW++
> asking them for a download URL.
>
> So generally I agree with your plan - just would prefer fonts-urw++
> instead of fonts-ghostscript.
>
>
>> [*] Please note that the fonts shiped in
>> /usr/share/ghostscript/9.05/Resource/Font in the libgs9-common package
>> are not even used at all and could get safely removed. Instead, they
>> are mapped to the fonts in the gsfonts package by means of the
>> /etc/ghostscript/fontmap.d/10gsfonts.conf file.
>
> I totally agree we should get rid of code copies. I have hesitated
> dropping them for now, as I am afraid some internal Ghostscript code
> might bypass the font path and rely on the specific location.
>
> Hm. I am now at the #ghostscript irc channel, so will simply ask... :-)
>
>
> - Jonas
>
> --
> * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
> * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
>
> [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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