fonts July 2010

fonts@lists.fedoraproject.org

13 participants
19 discussions

Some feedback on STIX fonts
by Nicolas Mailhot 25 Jul '10

25 Jul '10

Dear sir, Fist of all, I'd like to thank STIX for releasing its fonts for public use. We've been distributing it as a default component in Fedora Linux since Fedora 10: http://fedoraproject.org/ They will probably percolate from Fedora to Red Hat Enterprise Linux this year. We are also very happy about your decision to drop a custom licence for the standard OFL font licence. I regret that you didn't change your font naming to something more human friendly during the beta. Applications have been tested against Times New Roman for years, there is no reason to stick to Postscript-like whitespace-free names any more. In a related problem, STIX declares a lot of different font names, consuming a lot of precious space in application font lists. Could you please try to cut down a little here? Or at least provide guidance to distributors on the minimal font set they can distribute as default that is sufficient to display engineering text without taking so much place in font lists? Lastly, a plain text *.txt licensing file would be appreciated, as the current PDF one is a bit bulky. Now, as part of Fedora's ongoing QA work, we run automated sanity tests on all the font files shipped in the distribution. It is very important that all our fonts, especially those installed by default, pass those tests with minimal warnings. Our ability to collect font problems in the field is limited (most users do not report the font problems they experience) and we have to rely on automated testing. Moreover we've found out that most foundries do not test for the same problems as us. Therefore our testing usually complements nicely the one performed by font authors, and makes it a free service to thank them for releasing Free/Libre/Open fonts. This testing found several problems in STIX fonts. This is not surprising for such a young font set, but we'd be grateful if you could look at them and confirm we made the right choice in selecting STIX as a default typeface. I've attached the full test logs to this message. As a quick summary, we've found two classes of problems that need fixing your side: * Various fontlint errors. Fontlint is the font testing suite created by the fontforge project. http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/fontlint.html Fedora, OpenOffice.org, and others, have been adding new tests to fontlint whenever a bad font broke an application on our platforms. (see the fontlint data files in attached logs) * Partial script coverage. We understand that creating a typeface that covers the whole Unicode range is an enormous amount of work and not something that can reasonably be asked of most font authors. Therefore our test limits itself to detecting almost-complete scripts, and only triggers when less than ten glyphs are necessary to complete one or more of them (very often it triggers on the few diacritics necessary to support minority languages). Thus our test identifies areas where only a little more work can make the font files useful for many more people. Please use this opportunity to improve your fonts. (see the fc-query data files in attached logs, and the explanation in summary.txt) We also run unicode block coverage tests, but they are a lot less useful in practice (see the unicover data files in attached logs) I hope this feedback will be of some use to the STIX projet. Once again, thank you very much for releasing this wonderful free/libre/open font set! Best regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot Fedora fonts special interest group http://fonts.fedoraproject.org/

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New licence for STIX fonts: OFL (was STIX licence)
by Nicolas Mailhot 25 Jul '10

25 Jul '10

Dear all, As requested by many during the STIX fonts beta review phase, the STIX Fonts project changed its licence to the OFL (was using a custom one-of-a-kind licence initially). The change is effective in the STIX fonts 1.0.0 release, which has been pushed in Fedora today: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=186404 This should be fine as the OFL is Fedora's preferred font licence (with the GPL, provided the standard font exception is not missing) http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal_considerations_for_fonts#Preferred_Lice… Best regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Some feedback on your PT Sans fonts
by Nicolas Mailhot 25 Jul '10

25 Jul '10

Dear sir, Fist of all, I'd like to thank ParaType for releasing PT Sans for public use. We've started distributing it as a default component in Fedora Linux since Fedora 13: http://fedoraproject.org/ Depending on the feedback we receive it may find its way in derived Linux distributions (OLPC, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux, etc). I must say that your release of PT Sans under the OFL font license helps a lot. The OFL is a licence we know and respect, and our legal people are not happy about one-of-a-kind licences such as the PT Free Font Licence you used at first. Now, as part of Fedora's ongoing QA work, we run automated sanity tests on all the font files shipped in the distribution. It is very important that all our fonts, especially those installed by default, pass those tests with minimal warnings. Our ability to collect font problems in the field is limited (most users do not report the font problems they experience) and we have to rely on automated testing. Moreover we've found out that most foundries do not test for the same problems as us. Therefore our testing usually complements nicely the one performed by font authors, and makes it a free service to thank them for releasing Free/Libre/Open fonts. This testing found several problems in PT Sans. This is not surprising for such a young font, but we'd be grateful if you could look at them and confirm we made the right choice in selecting PT Sans as a default font. I've attached the full test logs to this mail. As a quick summary, we've found three classes of problems: * Bad font metadata. PT Sans font naming does not respect Microsoft's WWS font naming guidelines. It is a big problem for us as Linux does not perform automated font name fixing like Windows Vista or Seven. We suggest the following naming change in your OpenType/WWS metadata fields: PT Sans Narrow, Bold → Pt Sans, SemiCondensed Bold PTN77F.ttf [paratype-pt-sans-fonts] PT Sans Narrow, Regular → Pt Sans, SemiCondensed PTN57F.ttf [paratype-pt-sans-fonts] See also: http://blogs.msdn.com/text/attachment/2249036.ashx * Various fontlint errors. Fontlint is the font testing suite created by the fontforge project. http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/fontlint.html Fedora, OpenOffice.org, and others, have been adding new tests to fontlint whenever a bad font broke an application on our platforms. (see attached logs) * Partial script coverage. We understand that creating a typeface that covers the whole Unicode range is an enormous amount of work and not something that can reasonably be asked of most font authors. Therefore our test limits itself to detecting almost-complete scripts, and only triggers when less than ten glyphs are necessary to complete one or more of them (very often it triggers on the few diacritics necessary to support minority languages). Our test identifies areas where only a little more work can make the font files useful for many more people. Please use this opportunity to improve your fonts. (see fc-query results in attached logs, and the explanation in summary.txt) I hope this feedback will be of some use to ParaType. Best regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot Fedora fonts special interest group http://fonts.fedoraproject.org/

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New licence for ParaType PT Sans: OFL (was PTFL)
by Nicolas Mailhot 25 Jul '10

25 Jul '10

Dear all, At the request of various free/libre OSS organisations, ParaType has agreed to release the PT Sans font under the OFL in addition to its one-of-a-kind custom font licence. PT Sans was created with funding from the Russian Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications. The OFL version is now the one packaged in Fedora: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=186380 This should be fine as the OFL is Fedora's preferred font licence (with the GPL, provided the standard GPL font exception is not missing) http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal_considerations_for_fonts#Preferred_Lice… Regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot Fedora fonts special interest group http://fonts.fedoraproject.org/

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Some feedback on Yanone Kaffeesatz
by Nicolas Mailhot 25 Jul '10

25 Jul '10

Hi, Fist of all, I'd like to thank you for releasing the wonderful Yanone Kaffeesatz for public use. We've been distributing it as an optional component of Fedora Linux (http://fedoraproject.org/) since 2007 and it's been a pleasure to see it evolve. Your latest re-licensing from CC-BY to the OFL is very much appreciated (like other free and open source organisations, we consider the OFL one of the best existing font licences). However I note that your latest .zip release still does not include detached OFL.txt and fontlog.txt files. That's a pity as many users won't dig in font metadata for information and our own sanity rules forbid adding licensing documents when they're not provided by the original author (it's too easy to accidentally betray the author's intent when you write those in his place). Therefore, I'd suggest adding those files to make sure you're justly credited when your work is redistributed by third parties. Secondly, as part of our ongoing QA work, we've been running automated checks on the font files included in Fedora Linux. Yanone Kaffeesatz seems to fail some of those. Could you take a look at it please? I've attached the detailed logs to this message, they include the output of fontlint and of the coverage tests. P# t17 t19 1 4 4 Total 4 4 P# SRPM RPM EVR Arch 1 yanone-kaffeesatz-fonts yanone-kaffeesatz-fonts 0:20100514-1.fc14 noarch Test explanation: t17. Warning: fonts that do not pass fontlint sanity checks ☛ Font upstream task Fontforge's fontlint¹ test suite found problems in some files included in the package. Those problems may not be obvious and only manifest as strange behaviour in specific applications (making them hard to debug). For that reason it is recommended to report those problems upstream and get them fixed, even if the font file seems to work fine most of the time. You can ask help about specific fontlint errors on: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users ¹ http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/fontlint.html t19. Suggestion: fonts with partial script coverage ☛ Font upstream task Some font files included in the package are missing a few glyphs to be accepted by fontconfig as covering one or several scripts. Therefore they could be made useful to more people with only a little effort. Many scripts differ by only a few glyphs and it is unfortunately common for font authors not to notice they stopped just short of full support for some of them. To check a font file script coverage, run: $ FC_DEBUG=256 fc-query font-file and look for lines like: script-id¹(number) { list-of-unicode-codepoints } For example “mi(2) { 1e34 1e35 }” means fontconfig will accept the tested file for Maori if codepoints 1e34 and 1e35 are added. fontconfig is used by a lot of applications on many platforms so ignoring its opinion on a font is a mistake. Best regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot Fedora fonts special interest group http://fonts.fedoraproject.org/

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New licence for Yanone Kaffeesatz: OFL (was CC-BY)
by Nicolas Mailhot 25 Jul '10

25 Jul '10

Hi, At the request of the Google Font Directory (http://code.google.com/webfonts) Yanone Kaffeesatz licence changed to OFL (was CC-BY). The new version has been pushed in Fedora: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=186370 This should be fine as the OFL is Fedora's preferred font licence (with the GPL, provided the standard font exception is not missing) http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal_considerations_for_fonts#Preferred_Lice… Regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Re: What happens if a package includes non-free fonts already?
by Parag Nemade 19 Jul '10

19 Jul '10

Hi, 2010/7/18 Hans de Goede <hdegoede(a)redhat.com>: > Hi, > > On 07/18/2010 11:51 AM, Parag N(पराग़) wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Kevin Fenzi<kevin(a)scrye.com> wrote: >>> >>> On Sat, 17 Jul 2010 23:35:26 +0200 >>> Sven Lankes<sven(a)lank.es> wrote: >>> >>>> On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 10:09:37AM +0100, Paul Flo Williams wrote: >>>> >>>>> I imagine that Nicholas raised this problem while doing his periodic >>>>> fonts-incorrectly-packaged-in-non-font-package checks. The request >>>>> to separate out the fonts from poker3d-data has been long since >>>>> closed WONTFIX: >>>>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=477443 >>>> >>>> I just went through all bugs blocking F11-new-font-rules that have >>>> been closed recently through the bugzapper EOL procedure and reopened >>>> those which are clearly still valid. >>>> >>>> A rather large number of packages never had a single reply from one of >>>> the maintainers. >>> >>> Sad. ;( >>> >>>> Do we have any provenpackages who volunteer to be CCed on bugs that >>>> have patches attached? (Not that there currently are any such bugs >>>> with patches but reopening I have found some low hanging fruits which >>>> I'm planning to look at in the future). >>> >>> We should be careful here... if the packagers are really gone and no >>> longer maintaining we should orphan the packages so people can take >>> them over, not keep drive by maintaining them without being very >>> involved. :) IMHO. >>> >> >> I think those packages whose spec's need to be re-written should block >> F14Target and volunteer's are welcome to post patches/fix them. >> Recently I come across few packages which need to follow current fonts >> packaging guidelines. I start working on those but found >> openfontlibrary.org is almost broken and for those fonts it is >> upstream. I am now searching those fonts if have some other publisher. >> If i will find any other foundry then will use and import it in Fedora >> otherwise my suggestion will be to retire those packages whose >> upstream are gone now. > > Unless I read the thread wrong openfontlibrary.org will return. Also I see > no reason to drop packages just because there upstream is gone. Current fonts guidelines asks for using foundry name in font package. If based on initial import where upstream URL is no longer exists but its allowed to use that and use oflb as foundry name then I am more willing to work on it. Please tell me if this is ok. If you think its ok I will submit new, to be renamed packages for package review. If this is not ok then let those bugs be open forever..... > Esp. for > something like a font. If its a nice font and reasonably complete what sort > of maintenance would you expect from upstream ? Here problem is not maintainer required from upstream but should foundry oflb is ok to use for a dead URL? I mean once Rembrand had > finished the Night Watch, it was well finished. I don't see how a font is > much different. > I don't understand this... Parag. > Regards, > > Hans >

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What happens if a package includes non-free fonts already?
by Paul Flo Williams 18 Jul '10

18 Jul '10

I have been investigating bug 536920, which is a crash in fontlint when running against a font file included in poker3d-data. This font file is neurpoli.ttf, which turns out to be one of the Larabie fonts. Larabie fonts cannot be packaged because of the restrictions on modification: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_4 I imagine that Nicholas raised this problem while doing his periodic fonts-incorrectly-packaged-in-non-font-package checks. The request to separate out the fonts from poker3d-data has been long since closed WONTFIX: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=477443 But actually, it seems that poker3d-data couldn't have this font separated out anyway. Should I be raising a bug against poker3d-data along the lines of "you need to remove non-free font from package"?

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openfontlibrary is dead?
by Parag Nemade 14 Jul '10

14 Jul '10

Hi, Do anyone knows any contact person for openfontlibrary project who can help to re-upload and make old links active for some fonts? Parag.

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fonts July 2010