Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Fonts project meeting and elections

[Ben de Groot]

On 28 February 2015 at 19:52, Michael Orlitzky <mjo@g.o> wrote:
> On 02/28/2015 01:47 AM, Ben de Groot wrote:
>>>
>>> Since this is mostly used for web developers, I recommend to leave it
>>> off for desktop users, but possibly on for servers, for example.
>>
>> If we do the use expand, we should leave it up for users to set. I
>> suggest we default to only otf, if there is a choice. Other formats
>> should not be installed by default, unless it's the only option for
>> that package.
>>
>
> This is going to get confusing fast -- please consider just installing
> everything by default. If you default to "only OTF," what happens when
> you install a foo-ttf package? Is it a no-op? What if there's a package
> that only ships WOFF files? A combination of TTF and WOFF?
>
> Most of the fonts are tiny and it's not worth the hassle to avoid a few
> kilobytes. It will also keep the eclass nice and clean. If you default
> to installing everything, then when a user goes out of his way to remove
> (say) WOFF, you can go ahead and just ignore WOFF files even if the
> result is something stupid like an empty package.
>
> (The webfonts might be useful for clients, by the way. If they're not
> installed locally, your browser downloads them on-demand and caches them
> for later use.)
>
>

Actually, after thinking about it some more, and doing some more
research, I think this approach is unnecessary. Unless someone can
tell me otherwise, I don't think we have any software that can handle
truetype fonts but not opentype fonts. Most if not all of these
packages use media-libs/freetype, which displays both formats just
fine. So when we have font packages that offer both ttf and otf, then
we should just install the superior format, which is OpenType.

For packages that only offer one format, we install that format.

Webfonts are also not an issue, as they are simply repackaged OpenType
fonts aimed at web delivery. But most web developers use third party
CDNs for that, such as Google Fonts. For the very few people who want
to serve WOFF fonts from their own websites, I'm sure they can locate
them as necessary.

And webfonts are not useful for clients. Users should simply install
the otf (or ttf) format of those fonts locally, and they will be
picked up instead of the webfonts.

Summarized, I propose the following policy:

1. If there is a choice of formats between otf and ttf, install only otf.
2. Do not install webfonts.

Your thoughts?
-- 
Cheers,

Ben | yngwin
Gentoo developer