https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1748495



--- Comment #46 from Hans Ulrich Niedermann <[email protected]> ---
For experimenting, I have created a copr with terminus-fonts-4.48-2.fc31.1.3 at
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/ndim/otb-bitmap-fonts/packages/.

As you can see at
https://copr-be.cloud.fedoraproject.org/results/ndim/otb-bitmap-fonts/fedora-31-x86_64/01139759-terminus-fonts/,
this means there are now three separate packages to experiment with:

    terminus-fonts
        containing the convertfont.py/fonttosfnt generated

            /usr/share/fonts/terminus/TerminusBold.otb
            /usr/share/fonts/terminus/TerminusRegular.otb

        and the mkfontdir generated

            /usr/share/fonts/terminus/fonts.dir

        (is this still required for OpenType fonts?)

    terminus-fonts-legacy-bdf

        Contains the original bdf files as shipped from terminus-font upstream.
        This works e.g. with the emacs Xft font backend.

        /usr/share/fonts/terminus-legacy-bdf/fonts.dir
        /usr/share/fonts/terminus-legacy-bdf/ter-u12b.bdf
        /usr/share/fonts/terminus-legacy-bdf/ter-u12n.bdf
        and a good dozen of bdf files

    terminus-fonts-legacy-pcf

        Contains the *.pcf.gz files as built by upstream terminus-font.
        This works e.g. with the emacs Xft font backend.

        /etc/X11/fontpath.d/terminus:unscaled ->
/usr/share/fonts/terminus-legacy-pcf
        /usr/share/fonts/terminus-legacy-pcf/fonts.dir
        /usr/share/fonts/terminus-legacy-pcf/ter-112b.pcf.gz
        /usr/share/fonts/terminus-legacy-pcf/ter-112n.pcf.gz
        plus about 250 more ter-*.pcf.gz files

Some entries in the respective fonts.dir files are the same, but pointing to a
different font file.

As it turns out, the botched invented "Terminus Italic" (probably invented by
fontconfig) consisting only of hex number in rectangle glyphs (what is the
proper term for those btw?) only appears in the gnome-terminal font selection
dialog when either the BDF or the PCF or both BDF and PCF fonts are installed.

However, there are applications which do not support OTB fonts yet. Not every
piece of Linux software in the world uses pango/harfbuzz. So removing the PCF
fonts (or even the BDF fonts which the terminus-fonts package had never
provided in the past) would remove an ABI on which software relies.

Some of that non-harfbuzz or pre-harfbuzz Linux software comes from the Fedora
set of packages, and some will come from outside Fedora. Providing those older
font formats as a compatibility layer for running that software certainly is
not the worst of ideas.

E.g. emacs upstream is still working on adding a harfbuzz font backend which
appears to be aimed for emacs 27, which has not been released yet, and that is
an important use case for e.g. Terminus.

As it stands, having more than *.otb causes the weird hex number rectangle
glyph "Terminus Italic", but not having *.bdf or *.pcf.gz breaks emacs for me,
so the hex number rectangle glyphs are the price to pay for that. As to other
more test cases than just gnome-terminal and emacs, I still need to look for
and test a number of those.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.
_______________________________________________
fonts-bugs mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
Fedora Code of Conduct: 
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
List Archives: 
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]

Reply via email to