Re: TrueType font policy / best practices?

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@iki.fi>]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 06:08:19PM -0700, Wesley J Landaker wrote:
> On Sunday 28 March 2004 12:42 pm, William Ballard wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 11:40:48AM -0800, William Ballard wrote:
> > > On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 12:25:23PM -0700, Wesley J Landaker wrote:
> > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > > Hash: SHA1
> > > >
> > > > Hi folks,
> > > >
> > > > I'm looking at packaging some TrueType fonts, so I'm wondering if
> > > > there is an official Debian "font policy" or at least a best
> > > > practices document.
> > >
> > > http://egads.ertius.org/~rob/font_guide.txt
> > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200310/msg0390
> > >0.html
> >
> > Ah crap I misread your post.  I saw "best practice" and "font" and
> > went off half-cocked.  Sorry.
> 
> Heh heh, that's okay. Actually, that font-guide documents is useful; 
> I've read it before. =)
> 
> If there isn't a specific sub-policy or other document that talks about 
> packaging, I can probably work it out, as I've been peeking at how the 
> other ttf-* packages work and it doesn't seem *too* hard. (I still need 
> to understand defoma a little better, though...)
> 

Please do so!

The whole font subject is a big mess in Debian.

There seems to be no policy about fonts, and nobody knows where to put them,
or how to handle them.

Some time ago people were told to add
/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType to font path, but now that
directory seems to be empty? No fonts in there, just empty
fonts.dir/fonts.scale/fonts.alias files.

The ttf fonts seem to be in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ directory, but there
are no fonts.dir/fonts.scale/fonts.alias files..

What path should I add to my fontpath to X (for gtk1/motif/etc apps) ?

(I'm using unstable)

Defoma/Fontconfig/X guys please tell (or better, write down) how things should
work!

	1. In what directory all the (new) fonts should be/put in
	2. What fontpaths need to be set/modified for new dirs (X/fontconfig/etc)
	3. What's the purpose of defoma.. what does it do for the fonts
	4. what is x-ttcidfont-conf and how it relates to these other things

Thanks.

-- Pasi Kärkkäinen
      
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