RE: font policy changes
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: font policy changes
> From: Julien Cristau <jcristau@debian.org>
> Date: Thu, July 17, 2008 1:38 am
> To: unifoundry@unifoundry.com
> Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org, debian-mentors@lists.debian.org
>
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 00:19:39 -0700, unifoundry@unifoundry.com wrote:
>
> > What I meant by "don't work" is that, as you mention, these two options
> > are no-ops.
> >
> > According to the update-fonts-dir(1) man page, these options should not
> > be no-ops:
> > ===============
> > update-fonts-dir creates a fonts.dir file in an X font directory by
> > invoking mkfontdir(1x) with the appropriate arguments....For each
> > directory, which is simply the last component of its path (such as
> > '75dpi' or 'misc'), update-fonts-dir will generate either
> > /usr/lib/X11/fonts/directory/fonts.dir or
> > /usr/share/fonts/X11/directory/fonts.dir from the fonts.scale and font
> > files found within it.
> >
> > -7, --x11r7-layout switches the font layout to the one introduced in
> > X11R7: fonts in /usr/share/fonts/X11/directory (default is: fonts in
> > /usr/lib/X11/fonts/directory)
> > ===============
> >
> The manpage is outdated.
Okay, then as far as that problem goes, it is just that the man page
needs to be updated.
>
> > Here are examples of what happens in practice on Etch (4.0r3, i386 DVD
> > install), showing where the man page says the program should look versus
> > what actually happens.
> >
> > Invocation: update-fonts-dir misc
> > Documented Path: /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc
> > Actual Path: /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc
> > Status: works as advertised (and complains that
> > /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc doesn't exist)
> >
> No. It looks in both the old and the new paths. Did you actually look
> at the script?
I only looked at the script quickly, and saw that all it did was invoke
mkfontdir, and knew that wasn't enough to start using a font immediately
under X11. That's why I posted my earlier messages about whether it was
okay to just call mkfontdir directly (given that update-fonts-dir wasn't
behaving the way the man page said it should), and also if installation
shouldn't then refresh the X11 font list with xset or fc-cache.
The consensus seems to be that it's okay to use fc-cache or defoma in a
postinst or postrm script, but that it's not okay to use xset, because
xset will fail if X11 isn't running. It would be nice to add mention of
that in some way to the Policy Manual.
update-fonts-dir should probably no longer complain about
/usr/lib/X11/fonts not being found every time it is run, seeing as how
that directory no longer exists on Debian systems.
>
> Cheers,
> Julien
Paul Hardy
unifoundry@unifoundry.com
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