Bug#288928: xfonts-scalable: Please consider removing Speedo fonts out ouf default install
Package: xfonts-scalable
Version: 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10
Severity: wishlist
Please consider removing Speedo fonts (only two
font families: Charter and Courier) from default
install, by either deactivating them, splitting
them off to a compatibility package or some other
means.
Rationale:
Speedo is a very obsolete font format. The only
two Speedo fonts I ever came across are above
mentioned Speedo versions of Charter and Courier.
Both fonts are available in better versions (Charter
by Bitstream as a postscript font, in the same package),
while there are several versions of Courier, all preferable
to the Speedo one.
Speedo is so proprietary, that even fontforge (the wonderful
font editor that can read almost everything, including Macintosh
formats) cannot do anything sensible with it.
Speedo is not smoothed on Fontconfig/XFT/RENDER systems.
Speedo fonts can confuse users in applications like OpenOffice
(when they find two versions of Charter, one working with Kerning,
smoothing, and PDF embedding, one not).
While other legacy font formats (bitmaps) make sense in limited
use scenarios (e.g. in Terminals), I cannot come up with a single
use-case where using the Speedo version of Charter is preferable
to using the Type1 one.
Yes, it has been there for decades. Please consider letting it
go nevertheless. It confuses users and is of no benefit to them.
It can be locked away in some compatibility option.
TIA
/ralph
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.9
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Versions of packages xfonts-scalable depends on:
ii xutils 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10 X Window System utility programs
-- no debconf information
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