Re: a "fonts-recommended" metapackage?
On Tue, Jan 01, 2019 at 05:17:31PM +0100, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> in general, I support this idea, though I am afraid that it might turn
> into a pretty subjective personal favourites list over time. But let's
> see, this concept somehow works for the games-finest package as well.
Well, yeah. A curated list tends to be a good starting point, though -- and
in this case, "good enough" for a good part of people who want some fonts
beyond hard dependencies yet don't want to waste time.
So even if it ends up "Joe Blows' list of fonts", a personal judgement of
a member of this list is likely to be useful.
Use case: just received a preinstalled machine, from someone who firmly
believes in Apt::InstallRecommends "false" -- which made me wonder what to
install. Use case 2: a few months ago I installed a work machine for
myself, yet despite starting from d-i I found some fonts lacking -- and
also spent a while looking for what to install.
> Am Dienstag, den 01.01.2019, 02:05 +0100 schrieb Adam Borowski:
> > The first category would be stuff like dejavu (yes, you can end up with
> > it missing). Perhaps cantarell which I hate but which some gnomey
> > packages use without depending (and then look like shit). Probably noto
> > (see also second category).
>
> Agreed, fonts-dejavu-core is a must. And so is fonts-cantarell, at
> least for Gnome users. Do other desktops like e.g. KDE or Xfce have
> their own "system UI font"?
XFCE uses aliases ("Sans", "Mono"). No idea about KDE.
> > The next would be obviously Windows compatibles: for XP era there's
> > fonts-liberation, for current MS Office crosextra. These days, some
> > webpages/etc also assume anything is Android so noto is also needed.
>
> For the classic XP era fonts we have three packages to choose from:
> fonts-liberation2 | fonts-croscore | fonts-liberation. I agree that
> fonts-crosextra-* is a must, too.
>
> What is missing in this regard is a package representing the classic 35
> Postscript core fonts. Here we have a choice of fonts-urw-core35 |
> fonts-texgyre and probably fonts-freefont-otf.
(It's "fonts-urw-base35".)
I don't use TeX and haven't met an user this millenium, thus I kind of
dismiss its importance -- but see, here we got our first disagreement in
personal favourities :), exactly what this thread is about. So if you say
one or both of urw-base35 or texgyre should go in, let's have it/them in
-- skimping on 8 or 21 MB disk space is laughable.
fonts-freefont: sure, it's a very widespread font, with 41% total popcon.
OTF version takes less space at same quality, so it's an obvious choice.
> > For the third part, everyone wants symbols to work. We'd also want
> > emojis, and coloured fonts are problematic (they don't work in most
> > programs). As
>
> I don't have a strong opinion about the third group, but I guess having
> fonts-noto installed just for the sake of unicode completeness will not
> hurt.
Oh, I did not notice that noto's coverage greatly improved since its initial
versions. It can provide most scripts by itself...
Not sure what to do about emojis: a good part of programs (including all(?)
terminals) require uncolored glyphs (aka "text presentation"); the only font
that provides them is fonts-symbola which went non-free upstream. The
version in our archive is the last free one, but it might be problematic in
the long run.
I don't use non-browser GUI programs enough to have an opinion about
non-terminal uses.
> > And for the fourth -- well, it's not like any boxes you'd install Debian
> > GUI on have less than ten gigs of disk space, so there's no reason to be
> > too thrifty...
>
> This is the group I worry about a bit. Everybody has his or her pet
> fonts and I am not sure if wanting them promoted is a reason enough to
> have them in a "core fonts" meta-package.
Not sure if you guys would prefer going for a "core fonts" or merely
"recommended" list. The latter hits my recent use cases; the former could
be suggested to the d-i team.
Meow!
--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ Hans 1 was born and raised in Johannesburg, then moved to Boston,
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ and has just became a naturalized citizen. Hans 2's grandparents
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ came from Melanesia to Düsseldorf, and he hasn't ever been outside
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Germany until yesterday. Which one is an African-American?
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