Bug#721521: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#721521: ITP: fonts-urw-base35 -- Set of the 35 PostScript Language Level 2 Base Fonts
Hi Norbert,
Am Dienstag, den 10.09.2013, 10:04 +0900 schrieb Norbert Preining:
> You are a bit overdoing. First, did you consider the fact that
> the fonts currently in gsfonts provide cyrillic glyphs.
> Now removing them, what are the consequences?
> Are you aware, have you planned for that? Have you provided
> alternatives?
The cyrillic glyphs were added to the urwcyr fork back in the GNOME 1.x
days. At that time, GNOME still used the X11 font server to display
fonts and there were no free fonts with a better glyph coverage
available. Both facts have changed now.
The cyrillic glyphs from the urwcyr fork have been merged into the GNU
Freefont project. I mention this in the package description and also
suggest that package.
Reportedly, the glyphs were of questionable quality and the latin glyphs
were also (unintentionally) modified in this fork. For that reason, both
Ghostscript and TeX reverted back to the pristine URW releases. AFAICT
both have never made use of the cyrillic glyphs, anyway, since the
original Adobe base fonts also never contained them.
> There are a lot of packages wiht rdepends on gsfonts(-x11). You
> have to consider the impact of yor changes.
The fonts are made available to X11 under the same names as in the
gsfonts-x11 package. The scale and alias files were left untouched.
> Only because there is a newer upstream or release, it does not mean
> it makes immediate sense to go forth with it.
Sure, that's right. But there is also no need to stick to the old
solution just because it happens to work somehow. And I think in this
case it makes really sense to replace an old unmaintained fork with a
new release by the original upstream, who happens to be a professional
font manufacturer, and which addresses all the issues that have led to
prior micro-forking among the involved projects.
> That I will do after we - the TeX Live team (upstream, not Debian!) -
> has taken the new URW fonts. For this we have to evaluate the
> metrics.
Honestly, I have no idea how to "evaluate" the metrics and how to
justify then if they have improved or become worse or changed too much.
I am, however, sure that optimizing the metrics to be more like the
Adobe ones was part of the deal that led to the new URW upstream
release.
> Do you want to have Don Knuth coming after you because suddenly the
> ps files he creates look weird because the spacing is wrong?
Well, *that* would be an interesting afternoon. :)
> I am in discussion with Karl Berry about that. But as long as none of
> us (you, me, Karl, Walter Schmidt, ...) comes up with an evaluation of
> the metrics and changes, it will take a bit of time.
As mentioned before, since I cannot tell you if the metrics are better
or worse from a TeX point of view, I'll leave that up to you to decide.
> My suggestion is:
> * upload fonts-urw-base35 without any gsfonts relations whatsoever.
> * file bugs against gsfonts(-x11) on transition to fonts-urw-base35
> optimally, provide a transition plan, evaluate impact on other
> packages, especially with respect to the included glyph coverage
Alright, I'll do that next.
> * file bugs against TL (or you did already I guess)
> and, if you want and have time and energy
As soon as the package hits unstable.
> * provide an analysis of the metric changes that have been introduced
> together with a rationale for that
Tell me what you need to know and I'll try my best.
> ALl the best
Seems like I'll need it. :)
Cheers,
Fabian
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