Bug 698333 - [RFE] urw-core35-fonts -- adding fontconfig support
Summary: [RFE] urw-core35-fonts -- adding fontconfig support
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Ghostscript
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Resource (show other bugs)
Version: 9.20
Hardware: All Linux
: P4 normal
Assignee: Chris Liddell (chrisl)
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2017-08-04 04:33 UTC by David Kaspar // Dee'Kej
Modified: 2017-08-25 09:33 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Customer:
Word Size: ---


Attachments
git patch adding all necessary fontconfig files (21.83 KB, patch)
2017-08-04 04:33 UTC, David Kaspar // Dee'Kej
Details | Diff

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Description David Kaspar // Dee'Kej 2017-08-04 04:33:28 UTC
Created attachment 14044 [details]
git patch adding all necessary fontconfig files

Hello folks,

this RFE is specifically relevant to the urw-core35-fonts releases (and git repository), which you provide and maintain.

I have created a subfolder for the repository, which contains all the fontconfig files for each font family in urw-core35-fonts. Would you be so kind and add this to your git repository, so it is part of next urw-core35-fonts release?

The reason I have created it is to have better substitution support on platforms that uses fontconfig, and also that other distributions using ghostscript can benefit from it as well, not just Fedora.

But to give you specific example when it will come in handy in Fedora is when users will be doing upgrade to newer version of ghostcript, which uses newer version of Core Font Set (Level 2) from URW++. In case users have files that requires old fonts from URW++, then they should be correctly replaced with latest URW++ fonts that you currently provide.

These files also contains:
 * generic name aliasing (tells fontconfig it can use the URW++ fonts when an application asks for the generic font name like 'serif', 'sans-serif', 'monospace', etc.)
 * generic name assignment (tells fontconfig it can complete generic fonts with glyphs takne from URW++ fonts)
 * substitutions for TeX Gyre Font collections
 * substitutions for some equivalent Google and Windows fonts

Unless URW++ does not do anything radical with the current fonts that they provide (mass renaming, etc.), I don't expect these files to need any maintenance. They do not contain number ordering used by fontconfig, so each distribution can decide what priority these fonts should have when doing font substitution.

Best regards,

Dee'Kej
Comment 1 David Kaspar // Dee'Kej 2017-08-09 01:52:55 UTC
I have discussed with fontconfig upstream this RFE, and they are okay with it (they actually prefer that every font upstream keeps the fontconfig files in their releases):

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/fontconfig/2017-August/005985.html

So for now the question remains - would you be willing to add this into urw-core35-fonts git repository?
Comment 2 Chris Liddell (chrisl) 2017-08-09 02:36:03 UTC
The problem is, as I know nothing about the this and, frankly, even if I did read up on it, there's no way I'd remember it when required: who's going to maintain it if we include it?

I *will* forget, because it's not something we need for our purposes.
Comment 3 David Kaspar // Dee'Kej 2017-08-09 03:03:50 UTC
(In reply to Chris Liddell (chrisl) from comment #2)
> The problem is, as I know nothing about the this and, frankly, even if I did
> read up on it, there's no way I'd remember it when required: who's going to
> maintain it if we include it?
> 
> I *will* forget, because it's not something we need for our purposes.

Yes, I was thinking this might be a problem for this. My solution for this would be that these files will be provided "as their are", with no guarantee from your side. This could be stated in the fontconfig/README file, and telling people to submit patches they want something to be fixed.

For now, I'm even willing to maintain these files, if any problem is found out, so you could put me in the README as point of contact for this. In case I would have to move to some different job in the future, you could again tell people to submit patches if something is wrong.

However, I have put on my TODO list to create a small Python3 script that would generate these files automatically, based just on the mapping of font names to each other. In case (URW)++ does any changes to font names, the config file would be the only file that would need to be updated (without need of fontconfig knowledge).

For now, I would be nice to see these fontconfig files as part of next (URW)++ fonts release.
Comment 4 David Kaspar // Dee'Kej 2017-08-09 03:04:48 UTC
(In reply to David Kaspar [Dee'Kej] from comment #3)
> Yes, I was thinking this might be a problem for this. My solution for this
> would be that these files will be provided "as their are", ...

s/their/they
Comment 5 Chris Liddell (chrisl) 2017-08-15 07:52:05 UTC
Okay, I will pull these changes into our repo - hopefully, between us, we'll remember when it needs updating.