Comments on: Good Computing needs Good fonts http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2008/good-computing-needs-good-fonts ramblings of Anivar Aravind Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:07:31 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Understanding Design & Computers: Reviewing the Malayalam Free Font Community http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2008/good-computing-needs-good-fonts/comment-page-1#comment-99 Understanding Design & Computers: Reviewing the Malayalam Free Font Community Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:19:56 +0000 http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/?p=69#comment-99 [...] Since nearly a year has passed since I decided to develop a traditional Malayalam font and then went to part time studies and wrote my dissertation and dropped practical font work, I thought I ought to do a bit of research about what has been happening in the Malayalam free font development community. Anivar has a great post reviewing some free Malayalam fonts. [...] [...] Since nearly a year has passed since I decided to develop a traditional Malayalam font and then went to part time studies and wrote my dissertation and dropped practical font work, I thought I ought to do a bit of research about what has been happening in the Malayalam free font development community. Anivar has a great post reviewing some free Malayalam fonts. [...]

]]> By: admin http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2008/good-computing-needs-good-fonts/comment-page-1#comment-83 admin Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:13:32 +0000 http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/?p=69#comment-83 <quote>— Licenses must be accessible to users and hiding them in specialized metadata is an absolute no-go (You’d feel the same about any other info someone hid in metadata. You’re only finding this one acceptable because of your familiarity with fonts.)</quote> I totally agree with you. Licenses must be accessible to users. But what is the logic of putting License on Copyright Field? For every Free Software License is a most important field. I know it need to be visible. But I am against putting License data on Copyright field because gnome-font viewer does not show License Field. Here "hiding" is a bug with gnome-font-viewer. Copyright field is not for putting License. <quote>— we’re badly lagging in packaging of free/open fonts. Somehow packaging fonts seems uninteresting to font authors and to software packagers. The number of font packagers in Fedora is very small. Every font project that decides its practices are “good enough” and refuses to adapt to help the distro packagers, is wasting the volunteer time that could have been spent packaging other worthwhile fonts.</quote> Swathanthra Malayalam computing is addressing the need of packaging very well. We are running rawhide repositories. Debian treats SMC repository as the upstream. One person from smc team (Rajeesh) is a co-maintainer of smc-fonts package and maintainer of other malayalam computing packages in Fedora Anivar — Licenses must be accessible to users and hiding them in specialized metadata is an absolute no-go (You’d feel the same about any other info someone hid in metadata. You’re only finding this one acceptable because of your familiarity with fonts.)

I totally agree with you. Licenses must be accessible to users. But what is the logic of putting License on Copyright Field? For every Free Software License is a most important field. I know it need to be visible. But I am against putting License data on Copyright field because gnome-font viewer does not show License Field.
Here “hiding” is a bug with gnome-font-viewer.

Copyright field is not for putting License.

— we’re badly lagging in packaging of free/open fonts. Somehow packaging fonts seems uninteresting to font authors and to software packagers. The number of font packagers in Fedora is very small. Every font project that decides its practices are “good enough” and refuses to adapt to help the distro packagers, is wasting the volunteer time that could have been spent packaging other worthwhile fonts.

Swathanthra Malayalam computing is addressing the need of packaging very well. We are running rawhide repositories. Debian treats SMC repository as the upstream. One person from smc team (Rajeesh) is a co-maintainer of smc-fonts package and maintainer of other malayalam computing packages in Fedora

Anivar

]]> By: Nicolas Mailhot http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2008/good-computing-needs-good-fonts/comment-page-1#comment-82 Nicolas Mailhot Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:21:27 +0000 http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/?p=69#comment-82 « You did a great job in packaging smc-fonts for Fedora9. But In the post you are saying ” license inside fonts but not easily viewable, person should have fontforge or any other font tool to actually see that license” . It is a bug with Gnome font Viewer & not with the font. See bug #407605 . So detaching Licence text is not the right solution. » Anivar, 1. I'm not a Malayalam user 2. I don't care a fig about your clashes with the Lohit team 3. However, as the main coordinator of Fedora's Fonts SIG, I can tell you this is not acceptable. — Licenses must be accessible to users and hiding them in specialized metadata is an absolute no-go (You'd feel the same about any other info someone hid in metadata. You're only finding this one acceptable because of your familiarity with fonts.) — font metadata does not fit in general-purpose processes used in auditing the whole distribution (yes we do that) — we're badly lagging in packaging of free/open fonts. Somehow packaging fonts seems uninteresting to font authors and to software packagers. The number of font packagers in Fedora is very small. Every font project that decides its practices are "good enough" and refuses to adapt to help the distro packagers, is wasting the volunteer time that could have been spent packaging other worthwhile fonts. « You did a great job in packaging smc-fonts for Fedora9. But In the post you are saying ” license inside fonts but not easily viewable, person should have fontforge or any other font tool to actually see that license” . It is a bug with Gnome font Viewer & not with the font. See bug #407605 . So detaching Licence text is not the right solution. »

Anivar,
1. I’m not a Malayalam user
2. I don’t care a fig about your clashes with the Lohit team
3. However, as the main coordinator of Fedora’s Fonts SIG, I can tell you this is not acceptable.
— Licenses must be accessible to users and hiding them in specialized metadata is an absolute no-go (You’d feel the same about any other info someone hid in metadata. You’re only finding this one acceptable because of your familiarity with fonts.)
— font metadata does not fit in general-purpose processes used in auditing the whole distribution (yes we do that)
— we’re badly lagging in packaging of free/open fonts. Somehow packaging fonts seems uninteresting to font authors and to software packagers. The number of font packagers in Fedora is very small. Every font project that decides its practices are “good enough” and refuses to adapt to help the distro packagers, is wasting the volunteer time that could have been spent packaging other worthwhile fonts.

]]> By: Anivar Aravind http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2008/good-computing-needs-good-fonts/comment-page-1#comment-72 Anivar Aravind Mon, 05 May 2008 15:23:48 +0000 http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/?p=69#comment-72 1. Thanks for notifying about 2003 bug 2. I admit my mistake in Ascent-Descent and Em-size mensioned on the post. I used the version on my system and not the upstream. But main point stands, It is simply configurable through Fontconfig scripts and we are laready using it. So complaints are because you didn't include it on fedora 3. I still feel Lohit is a unfixable font now. Its design mistakes need a fix from the scratch. Patch's will not work . For me hirans fix is bugfree compared to the official versions. If you fails to incorporate the changes in it it only shows your inability 5. I am not a Fedora user. So you cant see my comments in Fedora bugzilla. But you can see my comments about the font in Debian bugzilla, the distro i am using now 6.I am aware about the spacing and Kerning issues in Lohit. But making this font as the default font for a distro is unbearable Anivar 1. Thanks for notifying about 2003 bug
2. I admit my mistake in Ascent-Descent and Em-size mensioned on the post. I used the version on my system and not the upstream. But main point stands, It is simply configurable through Fontconfig scripts and we are laready using it. So complaints are because you didn’t include it on fedora

3. I still feel Lohit is a unfixable font now. Its design mistakes need a fix from the scratch. Patch’s will not work . For me hirans fix is bugfree compared to the official versions. If you fails to incorporate the changes in it it only shows your inability

5. I am not a Fedora user. So you cant see my comments in Fedora bugzilla. But you can see my comments about the font in Debian bugzilla, the distro i am using now

6.I am aware about the spacing and Kerning issues in Lohit. But making this font as the default font for a distro is unbearable

Anivar

]]> By: Hiran Venugopalan http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2008/good-computing-needs-good-fonts/comment-page-1#comment-71 Hiran Venugopalan Mon, 05 May 2008 11:16:27 +0000 http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/?p=69#comment-71 To issues that happened due to me : I am not familiar with Fedora and Redhat stuffs, and NOT a core FreeSoftware/OSS developer. Some one told about the issues, I got a font, I never posted bugs but debugged. It was a fast move not scientific (only since I was not interested to work for a typewriter glyph collection). [i] On legal permission, what the file which I got contained such. I dont remember actually. [ii]I am sorry for that. But my version works better than any lohit versions! [iii] Thats my fault. I was lazy to make a change log file! [iv] My move was something a "from scratch" effect. [v]Waiting for some one to teach me how to "contribute", I am still unable to do.:) 'a font with 1000 bugs' and such comments was personal. Its due to pain as a language user and my bad communication. I never said any thing bad about the bugs. Bugs are supossed to be there! My comments are on bad design. Please check my comments again. I have specified that the bugs are solvable. To issues that happened due to me :

I am not familiar with Fedora and Redhat stuffs, and NOT a core FreeSoftware/OSS developer. Some one told about the issues, I got a font, I never posted bugs but debugged. It was a fast move not scientific (only since I was not interested to work for a typewriter glyph collection).

[i] On legal permission, what the file which I got contained such. I dont remember actually.
[ii]I am sorry for that. But my version works better than any lohit versions!
[iii] Thats my fault. I was lazy to make a change log file!
[iv] My move was something a “from scratch” effect.
[v]Waiting for some one to teach me how to “contribute”, I am still unable to do.:)

‘a font with 1000 bugs’ and such comments was personal. Its due to pain as a language user and my bad communication. I never said any thing bad about the bugs. Bugs are supossed to be there! My comments are on bad design. Please check my comments again. I have specified that the bugs are solvable.

]]> By: Rahul Bhalerao http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2008/good-computing-needs-good-fonts/comment-page-1#comment-69 Rahul Bhalerao Sun, 04 May 2008 12:09:59 +0000 http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/?p=69#comment-69 Few factual corrections and comments: 1. About the pango bug 357790 and the patch on it: The patch on this bug is a mere clean up version of the patch on bug 121672 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121672) which was originally created by LingNing. This was also based on the inputs given by Ani about the grammar of 0d30 and 0d31 which was later resolved (to 0d30 only) through discussions with smc. Point is not to transfer the responsibility, but to acknowledge that pango(and even other layout engines) genuinely has a problem that it does not behave the way Uniscribe does. Another problem in this case is that, Uniscribe behavior has changed from its version in XP to Vista and we are yet to fix this bug completely. Anyway, my patch was reverted one year back (see Comment #32 on bug 357790 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357790#c32). Ever since then I have urged on concentrating on the original issue which I still continue to. And Lohit was agreed to be fixed temporarily to suite the current pango. 2. About the size details of Meera font: First, as can be seen from the comments on Pravin's blog, he is not the only one to complain about this issue. Second, the Ascent-Descent and Em-size you mentioned here defer from the font that was given for inclusion in fedora. The font given for fedora has Ascent=1147, Descent=901 and Em Size=2048. 3. About Hiran's fixes and bug reports: Reporting a specific bug is always welcome , but comments like 'a font with 1000 bugs' and 'unfixable font' are the ones that I "personally" felt were 'agitation'. Thanks to Hiran for his contributions towards lohit and samyak, and I still encourage him to do that. But there are reasons for not accepting his fixes directly. I think they should be understood in detailed and learned as a student to be more efficient in an open source development environment. The reasons are: i. The font provided by Hiran as a fixed version did not appear to be based on the latest version of .sfd in the cvs (now svn) repository. ii. I was not sure of all of his intended changes. As in any other project, Lohit needs to put a Changelog for every commit. So I had to copy the changes based on his email(I regret not forcing the bugzilla then) and the visible fixes in the ttf file. iii. Not being based on the original .sfd and not being submitted as an .sfd, there was possibility of cvs conflicts to occur. So it was necessary to create a cleaned diff patch out of his fixed font so that changes could be both recorded and committed without any hassles in the repository. iv. I should have made him aware of all these factors, but I thought it would be kind of discouraging for him to do all the procedural details, so I did it on my own. May be I was wrong on this. I might post a detailed description of 'How to contribute to opensource font projects' sometime soon. 4. Thanks for notifying the incorrect link on www.fedorahosted.org/lohit. It is corrected now. 5. The bug fixing on Lohit started long back in 2006. But continuous changes in the requirements given by various people (bugzillas have all the records), changes in pango, changes to OpenType and recently the changes required with reference to my 1st point above, the bugs were ought to be popped up every now and then. Thanks again for notifying the current rendering issues, which are mostly recent. I would appreciate to see them in bugzilla too. Anyone who wishes to do that please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18NBugGuidelines. 6. Thanks for documenting the design issues in Lohit. In addition, I would also mention the kerning and spacing between glyphs is not accurate, which is a major issue IMO that the font looks bad when viewed in paragraphs. This probably was introduced by the original designers when they resized the font to match the readable size.Anyway it needs to be fixed. Hope we work with more cooperation and harmony. Few factual corrections and comments:
1. About the pango bug 357790 and the patch on it:
The patch on this bug is a mere clean up version of the patch on bug 121672 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121672) which was originally created by LingNing. This was also based on the inputs given by Ani about the grammar of 0d30 and 0d31 which was later resolved (to 0d30 only) through discussions with smc.
Point is not to transfer the responsibility, but to acknowledge that pango(and even other layout engines) genuinely has a problem that it does not behave the way Uniscribe does. Another problem in this case is that, Uniscribe behavior has changed from its version in XP to Vista and we are yet to fix this bug completely. Anyway, my patch was reverted one year back (see Comment #32 on bug 357790 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357790#c32). Ever since then I have urged on concentrating on the original issue which I still continue to. And Lohit was agreed to be fixed temporarily to suite the current pango.

2. About the size details of Meera font:
First, as can be seen from the comments on Pravin’s blog, he is not the only one to complain about this issue.
Second, the Ascent-Descent and Em-size you mentioned here defer from the font that was given for inclusion in fedora. The font given for fedora has Ascent=1147, Descent=901 and Em Size=2048.

3. About Hiran’s fixes and bug reports:
Reporting a specific bug is always welcome , but comments like ‘a font with 1000 bugs’ and ‘unfixable font’ are the ones that I “personally” felt were ‘agitation’.
Thanks to Hiran for his contributions towards lohit and samyak, and I still encourage him to do that. But there are reasons for not accepting his fixes directly. I think they should be understood in detailed and learned as a student to be more efficient in an open source development environment. The reasons are:
i. The font provided by Hiran as a fixed version did not appear to be based on the latest version of .sfd in the cvs (now svn) repository.
ii. I was not sure of all of his intended changes. As in any other project, Lohit needs to put a Changelog for every commit. So I had to copy the changes based on his email(I regret not forcing the bugzilla then) and the visible fixes in the ttf file.
iii. Not being based on the original .sfd and not being submitted as an .sfd, there was possibility of cvs conflicts to occur. So it was necessary to create a cleaned diff patch out of his fixed font so that changes could be both recorded and committed without any hassles in the repository.
iv. I should have made him aware of all these factors, but I thought it would be kind of discouraging for him to do all the procedural details, so I did it on my own. May be I was wrong on this. I might post a detailed description of ‘How to contribute to opensource font projects’ sometime soon.

4. Thanks for notifying the incorrect link on http://www.fedorahosted.org/lohit. It is corrected now.

5. The bug fixing on Lohit started long back in 2006. But continuous changes in the requirements given by various people (bugzillas have all the records), changes in pango, changes to OpenType and recently the changes required with reference to my 1st point above, the bugs were ought to be popped up every now and then. Thanks again for notifying the current rendering issues, which are mostly recent. I would appreciate to see them in bugzilla too. Anyone who wishes to do that please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18NBugGuidelines.

6. Thanks for documenting the design issues in Lohit. In addition, I would also mention the kerning and spacing between glyphs is not accurate, which is a major issue IMO that the font looks bad when viewed in paragraphs. This probably was introduced by the original designers when they resized the font to match the readable size.Anyway it needs to be fixed.

Hope we work with more cooperation and harmony.

]]>