Am 13.12.2010 10:59, schrieb Jon Dowland:
On Wed, Dec 08, 2010 at 12:11:47PM +0100, Ulrich Hansen wrote:I suggest Valessio changes the font to paths in inkscape for the svgs in the deb. So everybody sees the image like it was intended by the author.Why, if desktop-base now depends on the TTF package? What do you gain? It makes the SVGs larger.
Yes, I wrote that before I read Yves-Alexis' announcement that he added a depend on the TTF (see the timestamp, we wrote at nearly the same time).
But as we talk about our artwork in desktop-base in this list, it may be a good idea to discuss the pros and cons of using fonts in SVG artwork.
---- Using fonts in SVGs ---- _Pros: _The SVG is smaller. For instance the file "spacefun-splash.svg" from" desktop-base_6.0.2_all.deb" has 264369 Bytes. If I change the font of the line "The Universal Operating System" to a path, the file has 284006 Bytes. So that's 20 kB more.
In the deb-package, the artwork is part of a compressed tarball, that means the difference shrinks to 5kB.
But of course, reducing the filesize of a deb-package by 5kB is generally a good thing from a package maintainers point of view.
_Cons_* For our actual theme "Spacefun" the user has to install the package ttf-sil-andika which is 117,2 kB (368 kB installed).
* The package ttf-sil-andika is not on CD 1 of the installer CD set. So you need the DVD or internet access to see our Squeeze artwork correctly.
* According to the package description the font Andika is designed for beginning readers, for elementary schools. I doubt that an average user has much use for it. I feel annoyed by having already many fonts installed that I will never use, so that's one more.
* What comes next? If our next artwork requires another one or two fonts - do we add depends for them too?
* What if our artists choose to use fonts that are not in main? For instance "spacefun-splash.svg" from desktop-base 6.0.2, which is in testing at the moment, requires you to have the font "Andale mono" installed to see it correctly. Andale mono is (c) Microsoft, so at the moment our artwork requires the user to install "ttf-mscorefonts-installer" from contrib, at least if he wants to see our splash screen correctly.
Valessio has changed that in the new version, so this is not a problem any more. But do we want to monitor closely every font our artists use?
So yes, using paths instead of fonts in desktop-base.deb seems a better choice to me.