Bug#1051314: fonts-recommended: recognise noto-core as alternative to dejavu-core
On Wed, Sep 06, 2023 at 07:22:36AM +0100, Justin B Rye wrote:
> Package: fonts-recommended
> Version: 1
> Severity: wishlist
> Various major desktops now default to fonts-noto-core instead of
> fonts-dejavu-core. During a conversation with a fontconfig-config
> maintainer on debian-l10n-english about the knock-on effects
> ("https://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-english/2023/09/msg00001.html";)
> I noticed that the dependency chains ensuring that fonts-noto-core is
> actually installed at all are surprisingly weak.
>
> This font package used to be very nearly the only one I needed to have
> manually installed to ensure I got everything I was likely to want
Alas, noto has the downside of making font pickers next to useless, as
it declares every single of languages it supports as a separate font family.
So instead off just "Noto Sans" "Noto Mono" "Noto Slightly Serifed", you
have "Noto Western Klingon" "Noto Eastern Klingon" and so on, making the
list of available fonts one big noto fest.
Given that you can install Noto yourself if that is your choice, removing
any need for this metapackage, I don't quite see the point of declaring
an alternative. On the other hand, Dejavu has the technical quirk of
having been taken for granted for so long by random pieces of software,
I'd rather not skip it. Somehow despite Noto's ubiquity in the Android
world this is not the case for it, as software doesn't get ported (at least,
not without significant changes) between Android and regular OSes much.
I thus consider removing all (or most) alternatives here, and make this
metapackage a single opinionated set. Alternatives are good for tasks/etc
where there's a serious downside to having them not installed -- for a
set of fonts, not so much.
Meow!
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