On Sun, 10 Sept 2023 at 02:57, Gunnar Hjalmarsson <gunna...@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi! > > With fontconfig 2.14, which entered testing last January, upstream > fontconfig prefers Noto over DejaVu in /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-latin.conf. > The change was not preceded by any discussion I'm aware of. It appears > to be related to this Fedora measure: > > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DefaultToNotoFonts > > So Debian was kind of caught off guard. > > This is in line with the consistent pattern of making changes without much user consultation in that world. Seems change relates to giving a consistent look n feel, by using the same font family across scripts. Since its been a while since this mail , I only want to respond to specific example picked. > My personal view is that it is a change in the right direction, and I > have taken a couple of follow-up steps in Debian. There are still loose > ends and more work to be done to achieve a consistent configuration in > this respect. However, before taking further steps, I feel there is a > need to reach out to a broader audience about the change. Hence this > message. Basically I'm asking if this move towards Noto is desirable > and, if so, I plea for relevant input for the completion of the transition. > > <snip> ---------------------- > These are some points for consideration I have in mind: > > * The task-* packages should be reconsidered. At first hand I'm thinking > of all the non-latin task-* packages which recommend a particular font. > Let's take task-hindi-desktop as an example, which currently recommends > fonts-lohit-deva. I think it would be consistent to change that to: > > Recommends: fonts-noto-core | fonts-lohit-deva > > fonts-noto-core covers "all" scripts, so with that package installed > there shouldn't be a need to install fonts-lohit-deva. (And for many > non-latin scripts Noto offers better quality than the other non-latin > font packages in the archive.) > > While above should be fine technically for Hindi desktop to be viewable, but as a user I would expect additional fonts that are available get installed too, fonts-lohit-deva , fonts-deva etc. Even though these extra fonts would not be used for desktop itself, and only in say LibreOffice. Karunakar
