Re: Re: Security team plans for the squeeze cycle
Hi Felix (and Robert).
On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Felix Zielcke <fzielcke@z-51.de> wrote:
>>GRUB uses the unifont package's unifont.hex source file.
>
> Paul you're probable not happy to hear this, but we don't use anymore
> unifont.hex. Our font system has changed and now we need a BDF font for
> creating the GRUB 2 fonts.
I was not aware of GRUB's change to BDF.
>
> We now use unifont.bdf from the bf-utf-source package.
> Feel free to discuss it with me (us) if there's a better way to get a
> unifont.bdf for building, but according to packages.d.o it's still the
> only package which ships it.
In the unifont source package, there's a gzipped version in
font/precompiled/unifont.bdf.gz. I can create a unifont.bdf file from
it to copy to /usr/share/unifont, just as I do now for unifont.hex. I
added the /usr/share/unifont contents just for GRUB.
> I think there was a discussion on -devel that BDF fonts doestn't seem to
> be that wanted, but as said above currently that's the only input format
> for GRUB 2 fonts.
Roman's original process for creating unifont was: 1) edit
unifont.hex, and 2) run hex2bdf to create unifont.bdf from the
unifont.hex file.
Debian policy forbids the installation of BDF fonts in a system font
directory. I posted a message with a subject along the lines of "BDF
Considered Harmful?" on the debian-policy and debian-devel mailing
lists asking if support could be added for .bdf.gz fonts. (xterm, for
example, runs fine with a .bdf font in a system font directory but not
with a .bdf.gz font.) Nobody seemed in favor of the idea. Some were
strongly opposed.
On the one hand I can appreciate the simplicity of only permitting one
bitmapped font format. On the other, a lot of legacy Unix fonts were
created in BDF format. There's no lossless round-trip conversion from
BDF to PCF and back to BDF where the resulting BDF file will be
identical to the original file.
Someone in those discussions did mention that it's still fine to have
a BDF font in a source package, so I am not really opposed to the BDF
ban in system font directories. It was just worth asking.
I have about 700 glyphs left to draw to finish the Unicode 5.2
additions to the Basic Multilingual Plane. When I'm finished, I'll
work on packaging a new version of unifont for Debian. I can let you
know when I'm at that stage to work out details of what you'd like.
Of course if you use the unifont package, you'll have the latest
version font.
> --
> Felix Zielcke
> Proud Debian Maintainer and GNU GRUB developer
>
Paul Hardy
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