Re: Change of templates file in fontconfig-config

[Justin B Rye]

Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I made a minor — but important — change to the
> debian/fontconfig-config.templates file in the fontconfig source package:
>
> https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/45d8eda0
>
> That created fuzzy items in the PO files. I saw the reference to this list
> in the file, so this is a heads-up. Not sure how a change like this is
> expected to be further processed.

debian-l10n-english is the one part of the debian-i18n hierarchy where
there's no work to be done; it's all the other languages that still
have the bit in parentheses. Maybe this is a case where you can
safely pick out and delete those bits and declare it unfuzzied,
without needing to be fluent in Urdu and so on? I'm Ccing d-i18n for
any input.

Mind you, if fontconf-confontconfig-config now has a different default
font, why do the package dependencies still have dejavu as first
preference? If you aren't running plasma or cinnamon, almost nothing
seems to pull in fonts-noto - not even fonts-recommended.

How is a normal user doing an install expected to know what font they
are going to be using, anyway? Previously they could say "well, I
don't know enough about all this to want to customise anything, so
apparently I'll need Native hinting, whatever that is"; now they need
to *guess* that the default is some TrueType font they've never heard
of.

(When it talks about Microsoft fonts, does that mean the ones from the
non-free msttcorefonts package that disappeared in Lenny?)
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Thanks for your reply, Justin!

On 2023-09-04 08:19, Justin B Rye wrote:

> Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
>> I made a minor — but important — change to the
>> debian/fontconfig-config.templates file in the fontconfig source
>> package:
>>
>> https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/45d8eda0
>>
>> That created fuzzy items in the PO files. I saw the reference to
>> this list in the file, so this is a heads-up. Not sure how a
>> change like this is expected to be further processed.
>
> debian-l10n-english is the one part of the debian-i18n hierarchy
> where there's no work to be done; it's all the other languages that
> still have the bit in parentheses.

Right. Probably the comment at the top of the file, where
debian-l10n-english is mentioned, should be altered or dropped.

> Maybe this is a case where you can safely pick out and delete those
> bits and declare it unfuzzied, without needing to be fluent in Urdu
> and so on?

Unless somebody objects, I may do that.

> I'm Ccing d-i18n for any input.

Thanks for broadening the audience.

> Mind you, if fontconf-confontconfig-config now has a different
> default font, why do the package dependencies still have dejavu as
> first preference?

That's true in Debian 12, but not in testing:

https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/5aa10dde

> If you aren't running plasma or cinnamon, almost nothing seems to
> pull in fonts-noto - not even fonts-recommended.

Well, fonts-noto-core is recommended by the libreoffice binary, which
means that Noto is effectively default in Debian 12 also with the GNOME
desktop.

> How is a normal user doing an install expected to know what font
> they are going to be using, anyway? Previously they could say "well,
> I don't know enough about all this to want to customise anything, so
> apparently I'll need Native hinting, whatever that is"; now they
> need to *guess* that the default is some TrueType font they've never
> heard of.
>
> (When it talks about Microsoft fonts, does that mean the ones from
> the non-free msttcorefonts package that disappeared in Lenny?)

Those are good questions/thoughts.

The DejaVu -> Noto change in the font configuration was made upstream,
and hit Debian with fontconfig 2.14. There were reactions:

https://bugs.debian.org/1028643

https://bugs.debian.org/1029390

https://bugs.debian.org/1029237

But nobody addressed those directly, and Debian 12 was released with
some ambiguity. Debian was caught off guard.

I attended to the fontconfig package only recently, and have taken a
couple of steps to handle the situation. One thing is that the default
monospace font was changed back to DejaVu recently, so now we have:

sans-serif Noto Sans
serif Noto Serif
monospace DejaVu Sans Mono

It is apparently likely that debian/fontconfig-config.templates will
undergo further changes soon, so possibly I should wait a bit with
dealing with those PO files.

But I think we would need a 'font expert' to help get it right.

--
Rgds,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson

[Justin B Rye]

Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
> On 2023-09-04 08:19, Justin B Rye wrote:
>> Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
>>> I made a minor — but important — change to the
>>> debian/fontconfig-config.templates file in the fontconfig source
>>> package:
>>>
>>> https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/45d8eda0
>>>
>>> That created fuzzy items in the PO files. I saw the reference to
>>> this list in the file, so this is a heads-up. Not sure how a
>>> change like this is expected to be further processed.
>>
>> debian-l10n-english is the one part of the debian-i18n hierarchy
>> where there's no work to be done; it's all the other languages that
>> still have the bit in parentheses.
>
> Right. Probably the comment at the top of the file, where
> debian-l10n-english is mentioned, should be altered or dropped.

Well, *most* changes to template text need to go through d-l-e on
their way to translators, this is just one where we get to take a
shortcut.

>> Maybe this is a case where you can safely pick out and delete those
>> bits and declare it unfuzzied, without needing to be fluent in Urdu
>> and so on?
>
> Unless somebody objects, I may do that.
>
>> I'm Ccing d-i18n for any input.
>
> Thanks for broadening the audience.
>
>> Mind you, if fontconf-confontconfig-config now has a different
>> default font, why do the package dependencies still have dejavu as
>> first preference?
>
> That's true in Debian 12, but not in testing:

And I could easily have checked that, but somehow I forgot.

> https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/5aa10dde
>
>> If you aren't running plasma or cinnamon, almost nothing seems to
>> pull in fonts-noto - not even fonts-recommended.
>
> Well, fonts-noto-core is recommended by the libreoffice binary, which means
> that Noto is effectively default in Debian 12 also with the GNOME desktop.

It's a surprisingly tenuous dependency chain for something we might
want to rely on; I didn't have fonts-noto-core installed anywhere,
probably because I had noticed how many things libreoffice pulled in
and was sceptical about any functionality I was ever going to use
requiring *both* -dejavu *and* -noto.

Wait a minute... gnome-desktop depends on libreoffice-calc, -gnome,
and -impress, but not libreoffice itself, so the Recommends: on
fonts-noto-core is bypassed. If I ask aptitude to get ready to
install task-gnome-desktop on my testing machine (complete with
Recommends), that pulls in a vast horde of packages (it would almost
double the number of installed packages on that machine), but not
one of the extra package names begins with "fon"! Presumably that's
another instance of upgrades keeping what's already there.

>> How is a normal user doing an install expected to know what font
>> they are going to be using, anyway? Previously they could say "well,
>> I don't know enough about all this to want to customise anything, so
>> apparently I'll need Native hinting, whatever that is"; now they
>> need to *guess* that the default is some TrueType font they've never
>> heard of.
>>
>> (When it talks about Microsoft fonts, does that mean the ones from
>> the non-free msttcorefonts package that disappeared in Lenny?)
>
> Those are good questions/thoughts.

On further investigation I see there's still a contrib package named
ttf-mscorefonts-installer - not quite similar enough for my previous
search to catch it.

My other question, omitted to avoid making it look as if I thought I
knew anything about fonts, was "When it says TrueType, it probably
means as opposed to older formats, but what answer should I give if my
default font is fonts-freefont-otf or maybe fonts-localhomebrew-woff?

> The DejaVu -> Noto change in the font configuration was made upstream, and
> hit Debian with fontconfig 2.14. There were reactions:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/1028643
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/1029390
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/1029237
>
> But nobody addressed those directly, and Debian 12 was released with some
> ambiguity. Debian was caught off guard.
>
> I attended to the fontconfig package only recently, and have taken a couple
> of steps to handle the situation. One thing is that the default monospace
> font was changed back to DejaVu recently, so now we have:
>
> sans-serif Noto Sans
> serif Noto Serif
> monospace DejaVu Sans Mono
>
> It is apparently likely that debian/fontconfig-config.templates will undergo
> further changes soon, so possibly I should wait a bit with dealing with
> those PO files.
>
> But I think we would need a 'font expert' to help get it right.

I'm not one of those. When people say "look at these screenshots of
how much worse it is!" I can rarely even tell which way round
"before" and "after" are meant to be...

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-04 20:56, Justin B Rye wrote:
> Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
>> On 2023-09-04 08:19, Justin B Rye wrote:
>>> debian-l10n-english is the one part of the debian-i18n hierarchy
>>> where there's no work to be done; it's all the other languages
>>> that still have the bit in parentheses.
>>
>> Right. Probably the comment at the top of the file, where
>> debian-l10n-english is mentioned, should be altered or dropped.
>
> Well, *most* changes to template text need to go through d-l-e on
> their way to translators, this is just one where we get to take a
> shortcut.

Ack.

>> Well, fonts-noto-core is recommended by the libreoffice binary,
>> which means that Noto is effectively default in Debian 12 also with
>> the GNOME desktop.
>
> It's a surprisingly tenuous dependency chain for something we might
> want to rely on; I didn't have fonts-noto-core installed anywhere,
> probably because I had noticed how many things libreoffice pulled in
> and was sceptical about any functionality I was ever going to use
> requiring *both* -dejavu *and* -noto.
>
> Wait a minute... gnome-desktop depends on libreoffice-calc, -gnome,
> and -impress, but not libreoffice itself, so the Recommends: on
> fonts-noto-core is bypassed. If I ask aptitude to get ready to
> install task-gnome-desktop on my testing machine (complete with
> Recommends), that pulls in a vast horde of packages (it would almost
> double the number of installed packages on that machine), but not one
> of the extra package names begins with "fon"! Presumably that's
> another instance of upgrades keeping what's already there.

I stand corrected. My Debian testing was installed long ago and has been
updated since then. And yes, libreoffice is not there. OTOH I have
plasma-desktop available, so I may have mixed it up.

Anyway, currently it's hard to identify a Debian default font.
Previously it was DejaVu, since fonts-dejavu-core was always(?)
installed and fontconfig-config preferred DejaVu. Now fontconfig-config
prefers Noto for sans-serif and serif, but fonts-noto-core is not always
present. And that is the reason for the edit of the templates file which
this thread was originally about.

>> But I think we would need a 'font expert' to help get it right.
>
> I'm not one of those. When people say "look at these screenshots of
> how much worse it is!" I can rarely even tell which way round
> "before" and "after" are meant to be...

Haha, it could have been me who said that. :)

--
Gunnar