Bug#197154: Subject: It will be more convenient if xutils.postinst setups the font directories
On 12.VI.2003 at 14:53 Branden Robinson wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 06:31:32PM +0300, Anton Zinoviev wrote:
> > Thats why packages providing Type1 fonts (as gsfonts and
> > scalable-cyrfonts) have to be doubled -- one version for defoma and
> > another for X.
>
> I do not understand why this is so. Your conclusion seems hasty, and
> does not follow from the sole identified premise.
>
> > If xutils cares to setup the font directories properly there will be
> > no need to double these font packages. There can be only one version
> > which depends on defoma and invokes update-fonts-* _only if_ these
> > commands are installed. In that case if xutils gets installed latter
> > it cares to setup the font directories.
>
> In general, a package in Debian is expected to do everything necessary
> in its maintainer scripts to ensure that it is usable as intended once
> it is marked "configured".
Type1 fonts can be usable without X. One example is a print server
which uses ghostscript. Defoma provides ghostscript with fonts.
Another example can be TeX. The font packages only provide fonts and
they should not depend on particular font consumers. If some software
wants to use fonts it has to get them from Defoma (as ghostscript) or
directly (as X and fontconfig). Otherwise the font packages would
have to depend on all font consumers that don't support Defoma.
> Your proposal would undermine that. Font packages could be installed
> but not usable,
They are usable by all software that wants to use them.
> or all font packages would have to Pre-Depend on xutils. Actually,
> that wouldn't do it, either. A "trigger" mechanism to tell xutils
> to run its postinst script again would be necessary.
I am not sure I understand well this. But I see that I haven't
explained well something. Consider the following case -- the package
gsfonts is installed first, then comes xutils and lastly t1-teams. We
have the following scenario:
1. The postinst of gsfonts sees that there is no update-fonts-dir and
does nothing.
2. The postinst of xutils configures the font directories for packages
that are installed before it (gsfonts in our case).
3. The package t1-teams adds new fonts. Its postinst sees that there
are update-fonts-* scripts already and reconfigures the Type1 font
directory.
> Packages need to ensure that they get themselves into a usable,
> configured state. They can't count on some other package's postinst
> script to do it for them.
For a font package to be in a usable, configured state, one thing is
enough: its postinst to register the fonts with Defoma. For Type1
fonts we need more -- to configure the X font directories, but X is
able to afford this only because it is so important.
> Also, I do not see why you consider removing a dependency on xutils
> to be so important.
It is not important, it is only desirable. xbase-clients (with their
xftcache) and fontconfig are not much different to xutils with respect
to the font packages. Hopefully the maintainer of fontconfig is
willing to add support for Defoma, so there will be no need to depend
on fontconfig also.
It is also possible to add in xutils (or in some other X package) a
support for Defoma, but what I propose is a simpler solution.
Anton Zinoviev
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