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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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