Bug#1059329: cinnamon-desktop-environment: dependency on noto-font installs too many fonts, fontlist exploded.

2023-12-22 Thread dr. ir. Tjeerd J. Pinkert

Dear Fabio,

thanks for the quick reply. OK, so that is one issue less... then please 
close this bug?


I also made a reply to the fonts-noto main package. Both the exploding 
fontlist and difficult deinstallation are discussed there in threads:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983291
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=756456

Splitting out the Noto font in many language dependent files seems to be 
not so handy somehow... Unicode was invented to circumvent that issue...

However, the noto-core package still has many fonts installed.

Best regards,


Tjeerd Pinkert

On 12/22/23 17:06, Fabio Fantoni wrote:
Hi, this was already reported by other people and fixed in 5.8.0 (that 
is in unstable/testing) moving fonts-noto from deps to recommends.


I was thinking if it might be useful to further reduce the default 
installation (with recommended) by replacing fonts-noto with 
fonts-noto-core, but I don't know how much the fonts of the other 
packages recommended by fonts-noto are used.




Bug#983291: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

2023-12-22 Thread dr. ir. Tjeerd J. Pinkert

Dear Fabian, List,

thanks for packaging fonts for Debian.

On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:28:36 +0200 Fabian Greffrath  
wrote:

> If I recall it correctly, the primary suggestion in that bug report
> is to split fonts-noto-core into an LCG and an "other" package.

I have created a MR to implement this:

https://salsa.debian.org/fonts-team/fonts-noto/-/merge_requests/1

 - Fabian


I was also struggling with the extensive font list issue. I managed to 
deinstall the font today to get rid of the annoyance. Of course, I am 
now also rid of a set of type faces.


Why are there so many language specific font files in the package? I'm 
not the most knowledgeable person in this field, but, is it not the idea 
of a unicode font to be capable to include all languages in a single 
font file for one font style / typeface? Then the list of Noto fonts 
would slink to only the various styles available (20 or so?).


- Are there technical boundaries that prevent this other than file size?
- Would this be something to discuss with upstream how to tackle this?

I would guess not only Debian faces these problems with Noto?

Another thought would be to split the package out super fine grained, 
and make the font installation depend on the language selection of the 
users? That would be a lot of work though. I guess there is not an easy 
solution, but people are struggling with this font as can be seen by the 
various bug reports mentioned in this thread. Especially the fact that a 
huge list of fonts is generated by the way the files are structured.


The issue will become harder when more software starts to depend on 
Noto, I had both cinnamon and texlive dependencies. Even only the noto 
core was too much for my taste...


Best regards,


Tjeerd Pinkert