Re: [Pkg-fonts-devel] New release: GNU FreeFont
David (et al.)
Now that we have sorted out what's going on with Debian releases and
FreeFont versions, let's get back to this question of the policy of
building fonts.
I am surprised that the fonts in the Debian distro are all built from
source. Do they all use FontForge, or are they built in other ways?
But again, what is the rationale for re-building platform-independent
font files in your distribution? Is it just to test that it really
can be done?
Cheers!
On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 8:23 PM, Steve White
<stevan.white@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Davide,
>
> I have to question the interpretation of some of the policies being
> applied here.
>
> The purpose in building executables from source is primarily for
> platform independence.
> But the font files are meant to be already platform-independent.
>
> If someone wants to obtain the (open-source) program and edit the
> descriptions and re-build the fonts, they can, but I see no reason for
> the distribution to do this.
>
> By way of analogy, suppose the system had pictures, say png icons,
> that were built from some third-party description file using some
> open-source graphics program. Would Debian then be obliged to build
> the png files from the description files? Or can it not simply
> include the (platform-independent) png files and include a README
> explaining where the descriptions and their editor can be obtained?
>
> I don't understand the rationale for the distribution building the
> fonts from the SFD descriptions *at all*.
>
> Moreover,
>
> We are talking about the stable release here, aren't we? Otherwise,
> my gosh, so much fuss and delay over--what? The point of the stable
> and testing releases is to work out wrinkles just like this.
>
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