[RFC] gtk+ and fonts

[RFC] gtk+ and fonts

[Florian Boor]

Hi,

our current GTK+ packages recommend a single Truetype font (ttf-dejavu-sans).
This might pull in a quite large font collection that might be different from
what the user wants. For a Japanese image e.g. you might not want these at all
or you might just want different fonts (like the Android ones).

I would be fine removing this RRECOMMENDS entry without any replacement. Another
option would be to create a virtual provider for basic ttf fonts and define a
matching run time dependency.

What do you think?

Greetings

Florian

-- 
The dream of yesterday                  Florian Boor
is the hope of today                    Tel: +49 271-771091-15
and the reality of tomorrow.            Fax: +49 271-771091-19
[Robert Hutchings Goddard, 1904]        florian.boor@kernelconcepts.de
                                        http://www.kernelconcepts.de/en

Re: [RFC] gtk+ and fonts

[Koen Kooi]

On 07-12-09 16:41, Florian Boor wrote:
> Hi,
>
> our current GTK+ packages recommend a single Truetype font (ttf-dejavu-sans).
> This might pull in a quite large font collection that might be different from
> what the user wants. For a Japanese image e.g. you might not want these at all
> or you might just want different fonts (like the Android ones).
>
> I would be fine removing this RRECOMMENDS entry without any replacement. Another
> option would be to create a virtual provider for basic ttf fonts and define a
> matching run time dependency.
>
> What do you think?

I added that RECOMMENDS years ago to ensure people have a working 
system. Are you volunteering to fix up all images and tasks containing 
gtk+ apps to include at least one font?
In your japanese android usecase people can just install their favourite 
japanese font and use BAD_RECOMMENDATIONS to uninstall ttf-deja-sans at 
do_rootfs time.

I fail to see how your proposals don't regress things for the majority 
of our current users.


regards,

Koen

Re: [RFC] gtk+ and fonts

[Phil Blundell]

On Mon, 2009-12-07 at 16:41 +0100, Florian Boor wrote:
> our current GTK+ packages recommend a single Truetype font (ttf-dejavu-sans).
> This might pull in a quite large font collection that might be different from
> what the user wants. For a Japanese image e.g. you might not want these at all
> or you might just want different fonts (like the Android ones).
> 
> I would be fine removing this RRECOMMENDS entry without any replacement. Another
> option would be to create a virtual provider for basic ttf fonts and define a
> matching run time dependency.

Just removing that RRECOMMENDS (or weakening it to RSUGGESTS) would run
the risk of breaking images that are currently depending on it.  I
suspect there are probably quite a few of those and this might not be a
good idea.

Creating some kind of virtual for gtk+ to depend on instead of a
particular concrete font does sound like the best way forwards with
this.  And, of course, individual DISTROs are welcome to eliminate that
RRECOMMENDS in the gtk+ packaging.

p.

Re: [RFC] gtk+ and fonts

[Florian Boor]

Hi,

Phil Blundell schrieb:
> Just removing that RRECOMMENDS (or weakening it to RSUGGESTS) would run
> the risk of breaking images that are currently depending on it.  I
> suspect there are probably quite a few of those and this might not be a
> good idea.

yes right, I see this is problematic. In fact Angström solves on its own already
and other distributions should do the same.

> Creating some kind of virtual for gtk+ to depend on instead of a
> particular concrete font does sound like the best way forwards with
> this.  And, of course, individual DISTROs are welcome to eliminate that
> RRECOMMENDS in the gtk+ packaging.

Eliminating it on my own is what I do currently but I somehow refuse to accept
this as a good solution. I do not see why some misfeature we introduced a long
time ago should not be fixed - even if if can cause some things to break.

Greetings

Florian

-- 
The dream of yesterday                  Florian Boor
is the hope of today                    Tel: +49 271-771091-15
and the reality of tomorrow.            Fax: +49 271-771091-19
[Robert Hutchings Goddard, 1904]        florian.boor@kernelconcepts.de
                                        http://www.kernelconcepts.de/en