* Adrian von Bidder [Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:37:15 +0100]:
> Yo over there on d-policy!
> Explanation: we're discussing how to better organize fonts in Debian. One
> idea is to use virtual packages to have fonts specify their supported
> charsets and/or languages in a ttf-lang-* and/or ttf-charset-* virtual
> package name space. Amongst others, the ability of input methods to
> recommend (or depend?) on proper fonts was mentioned as an advantage of
> this.
> On Sunday 19 March 2006 09:06, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > We request for the creation of virtual packages named
> > ttf-lang-<langname> so that all font packages that are targeted for
> > the supprot of a given language can add a "Provides" on the relevant
> > virtual package(s).
> > The only drawback here is that virtual packages creation is a process
> > that is quite precisely defined in
> > http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.tx
> >t and we would need to request for the creation of *a lot* of virtual
> > packages...:-)
> Well, I guess we need input from the policy gods here ;-)
Depending on your use case, formally requesting such virtual packages
may not be needed. From Policy 3.6:
All packages should use virtual package names where appropriate, and
arrange to create new ones if necessary. They should not use virtual
package names (except privately, amongst a cooperating group of
packages) unless they have been agreed upon and appear in the list of
virtual package names. (See also Section 7.4, `Virtual packages -
`Provides'')
So if the set of packages that would need to depend or recommend a
ttf-lang-foo (or whatever name is finally picked) is reduced and
somehow related, this can probably be considered "cooperation".
Just for reference, here are some statistics (generated with the
attached script):
Number of virtual packages defined in Policy: 73
Number virtual packages provided in the archive (i386): 1611
Number of v.p. defined in Policy and provided in the archive: 62
Number of v.p. defined in Policy but not provided in the archive: 11
Number of v.p. NOT defined in Policy but provided in the archive: 1549
HTH,
--
Adeodato Simó dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer adeodato at debian.org
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
-- Josh Billings
Attachment:
virtual-packages-stats.sh
Description: Bourne shell script