Re: duplicates of fonts in some packages
Le Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:45:01 +0200, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo a écrit :
> Hello.
>
> I'm packaging adesklets stuff, and it cames with Vera.ttf font included.
> We've got this font in ttf-bitstream-vera package, so I was wondering if is
> it ok to duplicate it, since some packages are doing it already.
>
> At least that's something what I got after `apt-file search Vera.ttf`.
> wesnoth-data and epplets are not a case cause they using symlink to the
> font from ttf-bitstream-vera and depend on it.
>
> But widelands-data has its own copy. In addition its copyright file doesn't
> mention about different license for this font than for the rest of package.
>
> I assume that symlink is a good way (tm) for such situations, and that
> widelands is buggy, but I'm here to ensure myself and maybe others ;)
>
> Also maybe writing some script for finding such duplicates would be
> reasonable, it could in addition finds conflicting files in other packages,
> but that's only idea ;)
It looks like a use case for defoma. You can register font or appplication
to defoma which then provide some kinds of fonts to the application (dfontmgr
provide a visual view on that).
This is used for example by ghostrcipt (the print core) .
Maybe fontconfig could be used too (though it is only a font registrar).
I don't think a recommand to the wanted font package would hurt.
However font should not be in application package. There is no font policy
per se but at least the policy have a short notice about font usable by
the X system being packaged separately (i don't know to which extend
this apply here).
Well i really hope i would have definitive guidelines about that,
My opinion (i am not even DD) is that this is a good practice : fonts are
updated and have bugs. I prefer having people who care about fonts
maintaining them. (it would be like having the usefull man pages in
unrelated packages ... well some does it too :)
Regards
Alban
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