* Adrian von Bidder [Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:37:15 +0100]:
Yo over there on d-policy!
Explanation: we're discussing how to better organize fonts in Debian. One
idea is to use virtual packages to have fonts specify their supported
charsets and/or languages in a ttf-lang-* and/or ttf-charset-* virtual
package name space. Amongst others, the ability of input methods to
recommend (or depend?) on proper fonts was mentioned as an advantage of
this.
On Sunday 19 March 2006 09:06, Christian Perrier wrote:
We request for the creation of virtual packages named
ttf-lang-langname so that all font packages that are targeted for
the supprot of a given language can add a Provides on the relevant
virtual package(s).
The only drawback here is that virtual packages creation is a process
that is quite precisely defined in
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.tx
t and we would need to request for the creation of *a lot* of virtual
packages...:-)
Well, I guess we need input from the policy gods here ;-)
Depending on your use case, formally requesting such virtual packages
may not be needed. From Policy 3.6:
All packages should use virtual package names where appropriate, and
arrange to create new ones if necessary. They should not use virtual
package names (except privately, amongst a cooperating group of
packages) unless they have been agreed upon and appear in the list of
virtual package names. (See also Section 7.4, `Virtual packages -
`Provides'')
So if the set of packages that would need to depend or recommend a
ttf-lang-foo (or whatever name is finally picked) is reduced and
somehow related, this can probably be considered cooperation.
Just for reference, here are some statistics (generated with the
attached script):
Number of virtual packages defined in Policy: 73
Number virtual packages provided in the archive (i386): 1611
Number of v.p. defined in Policy and provided in the archive: 62
Number of v.p. defined in Policy but not provided in the archive: 11
Number of v.p. NOT defined in Policy but provided in the archive: 1549
HTH,
--
Adeodato Simó dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer adeodato at debian.org
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
-- Josh Billings
virtual-packages-stats.sh
Description: Bourne shell script