Re: Fonts for distribution

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

O/H Clytie Siddall ÎÎÏÎÏÎ:
> On 25/02/2006, at 8:06 AM, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
>
> > ØÙØ ÚÙØØØÙØÙØ 2006-02-22 ØØØØ 18:21 +0330Ø Roozbeh Pournader ÙÙØØ:
> >
> > > Gentium, Doulos, and Charis are already available in Fedora, in 
> > > packages
> > > named "gentium-fonts", "doulos-fonts", and "charis-fonts". All three 
> > > are
> > > currently available for Fedora Core 5 test versions, while at the
> > > present moment only gentium-fonts is available for Fedora Core 4 
> > > (Charis
> > > and Doulos will be available in a few days).
> > >
> > > For example, to install the Gentium on Fedora, one can simply type:
> > > # yum install gentium-fonts
> >
> > Well, charis-fonts and doulos-fonts are now also available for Fedora
> > Core 4:
> > # yum install charis-fonts doulos-fonts
>
> So, could we release them (plus Gentium) with Gnome? Do we distribute 
> any true Unicode fonts with Gnome yet?
>
> This is an accessibility issue as well as a i18n issue: it's more 
> difficult for users to access localizations if they have to hunt 
> around for suitable fonts. I remember getting an email from a lady who 
> had no idea where to find fonts for Vietnamese, and actually thought 
> that meant she couldn't use her own language on her computer. She had 
> been stuck that way for _years_. :(
Hi Clytie,
The general process goes like this;
1) The X server, Xorg, comes with a set of fonts. Therefore, one option 
is to get those fonts included in the next version of Xorg. Here, you 
have to wait when they accept additions in Xorg, and also spent time at 
the development mailing list. If you manage to do this, the fonts should 
be included in all distros by default with no extra work.
2) You can get the fonts included in your favourite distribution through 
the proper channels. You make a bug report, "Please add this and that 
font" and follow the process.
3) Once the fonts are in the distribution, the system (like GNOME) has 
to choose them to display text in your language. This is achieved 
through the preference (<prefer>) list found at /etc/fonts/fonts.conf. 
As no font covers all the Unicode range, the system has to mix in 
several fonts. Here you have to "fight" with other languages so that 
your prefered font gets used :). Interestingly enough, this is usually 
an issue between Greek and CJK... 8-]

The "preference" list mentioned above creates three "virtual fonts", 
named "Sans", "Serif", and "Monospace". This are virtual, made up of 
glyphs from different fonts installed on your system. GNOME uses these 
virtual fonts and does not go into specifics; it's up to your system to 
have a proper preference list, so that the correct glyphs/characters are 
used.

For DejaVu, there is currently work to add the glyphs from the Verajja 
font (Vietnamese), see
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dejavu-fonts

Personally, I am looking into Fedora Core and Ubuntu.

Fedora has some suboptimal fonts for Greek; the end-users need to 
install manually "fonts-mgopen" and "fonts-dejavu". Once they do that, 
Greek shows acceptably. The fonts.conf file does not list DejaVu (now 
the prefered font for Greek) in the preference list, requiring manually 
settings in System/Preferences/Fonts
Fedora has Dejavu 2.3 (latest) in their repository.

Ubuntu has DejaVu 2.1 in the repository, which is old and does not 
contain all the glyphs for Greek (the Mono version at least). In 
addition, the configuration files (defoma, etc) appear to be broken, 
giving strange results in gnome-terminal (bug posted). However, Ubuntu 
lists DejaVu at the correct place (for Greek!) in fonts.conf. I am not 
sure if they manage to update DejaVu to 2.3.

All in all, please consider the above as a guide to see how font support 
goes in your language.

Simos