Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[G Karunakar]

On Sun, 10 Sept 2023 at 02:57, Gunnar Hjalmarsson 
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.
>
> 
--

> 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

Re: Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Fabian Greffrath]

> 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



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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-15 05:03, Paul Wise wrote:

On Wed, 2023-09-13 at 21:09 +0200, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:

So we have a conflict of goals here. The good news is that a user
who speaks some latin language, and who thinks it's important to be
able to easily select font directly in various applications, can
do:

apt purge fonts-noto-core


That won't work on some systems because various packages hard-depend
on the various fonts-noto packages and metapackages.


To the extent there are such hard depends which are not motivated, bugs 
should be submitted.


I see at least one apparent case (maybe there are more): The meta 
package cinnamon-desktop-environment depends on the fonts-noto meta package.


--
Gunnar

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, September 14, 2023 11:03:07 PM EDT Paul Wise wrote:
Several packages ...
> Recommends: xml2rfc
...

For IETF RFC development, there are specific fonts that are required for the 
PDF format (these are Recommends not Depends because very few RFCs need to be 
in the PDF format, so most people might do without both the fonts and the 
other PDF tools needed.  It's not a free for all if you're building documents 
for the IETF.

The whole situation does seem somewhat messy.  In addition to the defaults 
changes, I guess things are getting moved between packages as well.  We 
recently had #1050053 [1] filed suggesting we change  the Recommends on fonts-
noto-unhinted to "the appropriate package" since it's now empty.  No idea what 
that would be though.  Suggestions welcome.

Scott K

{1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1050053

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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Paul Wise]

On Wed, 2023-09-13 at 21:09 +0200, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:

> So we have a conflict of goals here. The good news is that a user who
> speaks some latin language, and who thinks it's important to be able to 
> easily select font directly in various applications, can do:
> 
> apt purge fonts-noto-core

That won't work on some systems because various packages hard-depend
on the various fonts-noto packages and metapackages.

Personally I think Debian should use Recommends instead of Depends
for most deps on font packages (including for the Noto fonts), except
for things that don't fall back on other fonts, or require specific
fonts for aesthetic or other reasons, like games that need fancy fonts,
or code needing OCR-friendly fonts etc.

$ aptitude search fonts-noto -F %p | xargs pipetty apt rdepends | grep -v ': 
fonts-noto'
fonts-noto
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: plasma-desktop
  Depends: libpixelif-common
  Depends: josm-installer
  Recommends: task-korean-desktop
  Recommends: task-chinese-t-desktop
  Recommends: task-chinese-s-desktop
  Recommends: plasma-desktop
  Depends: libpixelif-common
  Depends: josm
  Depends: cinnamon-desktop-environment
  Suggests: fonts-droid-fallback
fonts-noto-cjk
Reverse Depends:
  Depends: prusa-slicer
  Recommends: xml2rfc
  Recommends: task-korean-desktop
  Recommends: task-chinese-t-desktop
  Recommends: task-chinese-s-desktop
  Suggests: signing-party
  Depends: openstreetmap-carto-common
 |Suggests: mlterm
  Suggests: goby
  Depends: freeciv-client-sdl
  Recommends: ddnet-data
fonts-noto-cjk-extra
Reverse Depends:
  Suggests: texlive-lang-japanese
fonts-noto-color-emoji
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: dino-im
  Depends: sxmo-utils
  Recommends: nheko
  Depends: texlive-fonts-extra-links
  Recommends: texlive-fonts-extra
  Depends: sxmo-utils
  Depends: supertuxkart-data
  Recommends: python3-sqt
  Depends: pango1.0-tests
  Recommends: gnome-characters
  Recommends: gajim
  Depends: fonts-recommended
  Recommends: emacs-pgtk
  Recommends: emacs-lucid
  Recommends: emacs-gtk
fonts-noto-core
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: libreoffice
  Depends: prusa-slicer
  Recommends: phosh-osk-stub
  Recommends: freetype2-doc
  Recommends: xml2rfc
  Depends: texlive-fonts-extra-links
  Recommends: texlive-fonts-extra
  Recommends: task-sinhala-desktop
  Depends: supertuxkart-data
  Depends: request-tracker5
  Depends: pango1.0-tests
  Depends: odoo-16
  Depends: qml-module-lomiri-components-labs
  Depends: qml-module-lomiri-components
  Depends: lomiri-system-settings
  Recommends: libreoffice
  Recommends: freetype2-doc
  Depends: arctica-greeter
 |Depends: fontconfig-config
  Recommends: python3-fabulous
fonts-noto-extra
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: libreoffice
  Depends: retroarch-assets
  Recommends: libreoffice
fonts-noto-hinted
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: plasma-integration
  Depends: prusa-slicer
  Depends: request-tracker4
  Recommends: plasma-integration
  Depends: openstreetmap-carto-common
  Recommends: kodi-data
fonts-noto-mono
Reverse Depends:
  Depends: buskill
  Recommends: libreoffice
  Depends: libpixelif-common
  Depends: texlive-fonts-extra-links
  Recommends: texlive-fonts-extra
  Suggests: signing-party
  Depends: qml-module-lomiri-components-labs
  Depends: qml-module-lomiri-components
  Depends: lomiri-terminal-app
  Recommends: libreoffice
  Depends: libpixelif-common
  Recommends: kodi-data
  Recommends: fonts-droid-fallback
fonts-noto-ui-core
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: libreoffice
  Recommends: task-sinhala-desktop
  Depends: supertuxkart-data
  Recommends: libreoffice
fonts-noto-ui-extra
Reverse Depends:
fonts-noto-unhinted
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: xml2rfc
  Depends: openstreetmap-carto-common

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-13 21:09, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:

There are at least two questions:

1. Should fonts-noto-core be installed by default?


I just uploaded fontconfig 2.14.2-6 including this commit:

https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/3b8ef475


2. Which font should fontconfig prefer?


Given that fonts-noto-core is not installed by default, the effective 
"default font" is now DejaVu again, even if 60-latin.conf prefers Noto 
over DejaVu for sans-serif and serif. I see no urgent need to change that.


--
Gunnar

Re: Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Fabian Greffrath]

> It's a bit ironic. I proposed in a MR to prepend fonts-noto-core to
> that list, and you merged it. At the time I wasn't aware of the
> significance of being listed first, and I suppose you weren't either.

Yes, this sounds ironic and you are right, I wasn't aware of the
implications of this change. :/

In my defense, I didn't have the fonts-noto-core package installed at
that time (for obvious reasons). And albeit taking part in the
discussion in #983291, I wasn't aware anymore of the fact that this was
indeed the "core" package that bundled 168 font files. To me it looked
like we were following upstream and replace one "core" font package
with the other, but I admit I wasn't prepared that the latter one
contained ~150 more font files than the former.

Again, I have no problem with replacing DejaVU Sans/Serif/Mono with
Noto Sans/Serif/Mono, my only problem is replacing the former with the
latter plus 150 more fonts that I didn't ask for. ;)

Cheers,

 - Fabian



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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-14 10:50, Adam Borowski wrote:

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 09:09:00PM +0200, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:

There is a problem with fonts-noto-core, though, as several people
have mentioned already: For non-LCG scripts it provides one font
per script. And there are quite a few of those. So for a user, who
wants to actively and often select font in a font picker, the list
of font options gets horribly long.

Personally I see that as a shortcoming in the font pickers. They
ought to offer some "favorites" functionality, in the same manner
as it works with keyboard layouts. Unfortunately they don't, at
least as far as I know.


Why "favorities"?  No other font assumes itself to be special enough
to require such an extra functionality.


I didn't mean to attach any such characteristic to the fonts. The idea 
is to let each user cherry pick a set of fonts between which they can 
switch easily.


--
Gunnar

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-13 21:29, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

Quoting Gunnar Hjalmarsson (2023-09-13 21:09:00)

There is a problem with fonts-noto-core, though, as several people
have mentioned already: For non-LCG scripts it provides one font
per script. And there are quite a few of those. So for a user, who
wants to actively and often select font in a font picker, the list
of font options gets horribly long.

Personally I see that as a shortcoming in the font pickers. They
ought to offer some "favorites" functionality, in the same manner
as it works with keyboard layouts. Unfortunately they don't, at
least as far as I know.


Perhaps it is then immature to switch to using fonts-noto by
default, for the above reason alone


Yeah, given the Debian culture with respect to font handling, the 
proposal may have been raised prematurely.



So we have a conflict of goals here. The good news is that a user
who speaks some latin language, and who thinks it's important to be
able to easily select font directly in various applications, can
do:

apt purge fonts-noto-core


Just as easily as those disliking a font can remove it, those
appreciating a font can install it.  Difference is if we want to
bloat all systems by default or not.


Yep. That's the crux of this discussion.

--
Gunnar

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-14 11:16, Fabian Greffrath wrote:

Seriously, what I think should be installed on *every* system is a
complete set of serif/sans/mono latin fonts. And then additional
fonts should get pulled in by task-*-desktop packages based on the
user's selected language during D-I. This is how it was in
"fonts-dejavu-core" times.


This discussion tends to confirm that view as the consensus.


Instead, if you install fonts-noto-core on every system (at least as
it is now) you don't actually help the e.g. Devanagari people by
installing a Tamil font on their systems and vice versa (just to
pick some examples). But in the end, everybody ends up with
literally hundreds of fonts that they can read as much or less as the
"tofu" glyphs that they are meant to replace.


True. It's still what I personally would prefer.

Let me point at one not uncommon case: People who are able to read some 
non-Latin language(s) often prefer English as the display language — 
because the particular non-Latin language has poor translation coverage 
or for some other reason — and hence install in English. Then the task-* 
files don't help much.



Anyway, probably the conclusion from this discussion is that we should 
move fonts-noto-core downwards in this list:


$ apt-cache depends fontconfig-config | grep fonts
 |Depends: fonts-noto-core
 |Depends: fonts-dejavu-core
 |Depends: fonts-liberation
 |Depends: fonts-croscore
 |Depends: fonts-freefont-otf
 |Depends: fonts-freefont-ttf
 |Depends: fonts-urw-base35
  Depends: fonts-texgyre

It's a bit ironic. I proposed in a MR to prepend fonts-noto-core to that 
list, and you merged it. At the time I wasn't aware of the significance 
of being listed first, and I suppose you weren't either.


As regards 60-latin.conf there is probably no reason to change it 
further compared to upstream. If a user installs fonts-noto-core, Noto 
will become default for sans-serif and serif, and it's reasonable to 
assume that it is what they want in that case.


What do others think? Is that a reasonable conclusion from this discussion?

--
Gunnar

Re: Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Fabian Greffrath]

> So we have a conflict of goals here. The good news is that a user who
> speaks some latin language, and who thinks it's important to be able
> to easily select font directly in various applications, can do:
> 
> apt purge fonts-noto-core

If this is deemed "okayish", then why bother about a default font
installation at all? Why not install all the cruft and let the user
uninstall what they don't need? Its that easy. 

Seriously, what I think should be installed on *every* system is a
complete set of serif/sans/mono latin fonts. And then additional fonts
should get pulled in by task-*-desktop packages based on the user's
selected language during D-I. This is how it was in "fonts-dejavu-core"
times.

Instead, if you install fonts-noto-core on every system (at least as it
is now) you don't actually help the e.g. Devanagari people by
installing a Tamil font on their systems and vice versa (just to pick
some examples). But in the end, everybody ends up with literally
hundreds of fonts that they can read as much or less as the "tofu"
glyphs that they are meant to replace.

> Some people have complained.[3] But overall I think that most users
> like the idea with a worldwide font coverage.

That may be the Noto project's goal, but not mine. Is it Debian's goal
at all? Note that I am not talking about font *availability* here, but
worldwide coverage in the default install.

> Perhaps the primary suggestion, but not the expected future:  I
> maintain
> the package fonts-noto, and what you refer to is the opinion of
> Fabian,
> who disagrees with my views on how to maintain that package.

No, that's the one thing that the bug reporter in #983291 requested
from you. Please read it again.

Also, maybe it would make sense to populate the fonts-noto-core package
by an actual selection based on alternatives and quality. The summary
provided here may provide a hint:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DefaultToNotoFonts

Cheers,

 - Fabian



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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Adam Borowski]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 09:09:00PM +0200, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
> There is a problem with fonts-noto-core, though, as several people have
> mentioned already: For non-LCG scripts it provides one font per script. And
> there are quite a few of those. So for a user, who wants to actively and
> often select font in a font picker, the list of font options gets horribly
> long.
> 
> Personally I see that as a shortcoming in the font pickers. They ought to
> offer some "favorites" functionality, in the same manner as it works with
> keyboard layouts. Unfortunately they don't, at least as far as I know.

Why "favorities"?  No other font assumes itself to be special enough to
require such an extra functionality.  And in good font pickers (eg. GTK2 but
spefically _not_ GTK3), each font family gives a single entry, with
styles being a secondary choice.

Also, for pickers that are helpful enough to provide a sample outright,
being told that a family is family means they need to load and render the
sample from only one font file.  I don't see a real way to speed that up
(can parallelize, but that's about it).  Fontconfig's caches let you avoid
having to open the font files to fetch metadata, but there's too many
details that can alter rendering samples (connected monitors, font size,
etc) to cache the images reasonably.

> So we have a conflict of goals here. The good news is that a user who speaks
> some latin language, and who thinks it's important to be able to easily
> select font directly in various applications, can do:

I wouldn't care about Latin languages at all here.  About any font can do
this well, and there are thousands of fonts that do it better than Noto
(plus hundreds of thousands that do it worse).  Heck, my favourite font I
use for non-monospace browser setting is Aroania (bin:fonts-ancient-scripts)
-- a byproduct of a random script I can't even read nor I care about.

> But the many fonts is not only a disadvantage. It allows you to prefer Noto
> fonts for some non-latin scripts, and other fonts for other ditto. This
> flexibility is effectively blocked if DejaVu Sans, where everything is
> bundled into the same font, is installed and default.

This can be done by giving high-quality optional packages a higher score
than the fallback default.

> Since it already has been changed back to DejaVu Sans Mono for monospace,
> let's talk about sans-serif/serif here.

I wouldn't call either Dejavu Sans Mono nor Noto Mono contenders for a
good Latin monospace font, it's a pretty crowded competition.  Things were
different the previous millenium when Dejavu was made, but we can do better.

> you need to be attentive to the font rendering settings. As an example I
> think that enabling 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf is a good idea for many screens
> when using Noto fonts.

That's a bad default as it produces a distinctly bad result on any non-RGB
(usually rotated) screen.  Monochrome AA is safe, and while it might be even
good to enable sub-pixel RGB _dynamically_, changing sub-pixel dynamically
is not a thing yet as far as I'm aware.  Thus, let's pick an AA default
that's good enough but works for everyone.

Requiring RGB to look good is another strike against Noto.


Meow!
-- 
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⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ I was born a dumb, ugly and work-loving kid, then I got swapped on
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ the maternity ward.
⠈⠳⣄

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Gunnar Hjalmarsson (2023-09-13 21:28:00)
> Hi Fabian,
> 
> On 2023-09-12 08:24, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> > as has already been stated elsewhere, fontconfig upstream's move to
> > Noto as the default font has most probably not been done for
> > aesthetical reasons. That is, it is not the "most beautiful font"
> > that people "like better" then DejaVu, but the single usable fallback
> > font with the widest glyph coverage.
> 
> That might be true.
> 
> > However, I think that the acceptance - or rather lack thereof - of
> > the Noto fonts in Debian has indeed to do with the way they are
> > currently packaged. There is no pendant to the fonts-dejavu-core
> > package which only installs the generic serif and sans-serif flavors.
> > Instead, even the fonts-noto-core package installs a full pack of 268
> > (!) font files. This is discussed in detail in #983291 [1].
> 
> The way they are packaged is absolutely a restriction. How important 
> restriction it is depends on what you want to achieve.
> 
> 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.

Perhaps the primary suggestion, but not the expected future:  I maintain
the package fonts-noto, and what you refer to is the opinion of Fabian,
who disagrees with my views on how to maintain that package.

Also, the referenced bugreport is about pain of selecting fonts, and
that issue is better addressed in font pickers than by avoiding to
install fonts.  Notably, the very purpose of the Noto font is to achieve
"no tofu" so it is counter to the purpose of that font to omit
installing some of its families.


 - Jonas

-- 
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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Gunnar Hjalmarsson (2023-09-13 21:09:00)
> Should fonts-noto-core be installed by default?
> ---
> Personally I think it should. The primary reason is that fonts-noto-core 
> offers a broad coverage of Unicode characters, and the quality is in 
> many cases superior to the free alternatives. Ask for instance an Arabic 
> or Sinhala speaking user.
> 
> To really make use of a Noto font, the font configuration may need to be 
> tweaked. But having it installed is the basic prerequisite, and I think 
> it makes sense that Debian as an internationally spread OS provides 
> fonts of good quality for most languages.
> 
> There is a problem with fonts-noto-core, though, as several people have 
> mentioned already: For non-LCG scripts it provides one font per script. 
> And there are quite a few of those. So for a user, who wants to actively 
> and often select font in a font picker, the list of font options gets 
> horribly long.
> 
> Personally I see that as a shortcoming in the font pickers. They ought 
> to offer some "favorites" functionality, in the same manner as it works 
> with keyboard layouts. Unfortunately they don't, at least as far as I know.

Perhaps it is then immature to switch to using fonts-noto by default,
for the above reason alone (but see also further comments below).


> So we have a conflict of goals here. The good news is that a user who 
> speaks some latin language, and who thinks it's important to be able to 
> easily select font directly in various applications, can do:
> 
> apt purge fonts-noto-core

Just as easily as those disliking a font can remove it, those
appreciating a font can install it.  Difference is if we want to bloat
all systems by default or not.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
 * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones

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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Hi Fabian,

On 2023-09-12 08:24, Fabian Greffrath wrote:

as has already been stated elsewhere, fontconfig upstream's move to
Noto as the default font has most probably not been done for
aesthetical reasons. That is, it is not the "most beautiful font"
that people "like better" then DejaVu, but the single usable fallback
font with the widest glyph coverage.


That might be true.


However, I think that the acceptance - or rather lack thereof - of
the Noto fonts in Debian has indeed to do with the way they are
currently packaged. There is no pendant to the fonts-dejavu-core
package which only installs the generic serif and sans-serif flavors.
Instead, even the fonts-noto-core package installs a full pack of 268
(!) font files. This is discussed in detail in #983291 [1].


The way they are packaged is absolutely a restriction. How important 
restriction it is depends on what you want to achieve.


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. If that 
would happen, you would be able to install Noto for LCG scripts only 
(only a handful fonts, even if you include things like math and 
symbols). I'm sure that some people consider that to be sufficient. They 
don't see it as an issue if "tofus"[2] show up once in a while, since 
they don't understand those characters anyway.


Personally I dislike "tofus". They give me a feeling that my system is 
broken, even if I still wouldn't understand the beautiful characters 
that are not rendered properly.


Maybe I'm colored from having used Ubuntu for more than a decade. The 
Ubuntu desktop has for a long time installed fonts packages which cover 
a lot of Asian etc. languages. By default. For everyone. So the ongoing 
switch to Noto is not such a big deal on Ubuntu. fonts-noto-core gets 
installed by default, and quite a few font packages for non-latin 
scripts are dropped.


Some people have complained.[3] But overall I think that most users like 
the idea with a worldwide font coverage.


I realize that Debian has done it differently, and for that reason 
installing fonts-noto-core in Debian — whether as default or fallback — 
is a bigger change. But if we would want to enter 'the worldwide 
coverage path', splitting up fonts-noto-core wouldn't make much of a 
difference, would it?



So, if asked for my personal opinion, I could live with DejaVu Mono
as the default monospace font (for aesthetical reasons) and Noto Sans
and Serif as the default sans-serif and serif fonts (for pragmatic
reasons), respectively, but only if the latter are packaged
separately.


So you see that as a condition.. Please consider what I wrote above. 
Also, I realized that I failed to really argue for my position when 
starting this thread, so I have posted another long message in an 
attempt to structure the discussion:


https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2023/09/msg00146.html


Cheers,

- Fabian

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983291


[2] https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/tofu

[3] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/20924

--
Rgds,
Gunnar

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-09 23:08, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:

My personal view is that it is a change in the right direction,


It struck me that I stated a position in my initial post without really 
arguing for it. Silly me.


So with this message I try to repair that, and also highlight the 
questions I think this topic really boils down to.



There are at least two questions:

1. Should fonts-noto-core be installed by default?

2. Which font should fontconfig prefer?

At this moment, i.e. if you install Debian via a trixie ISO, the 
situation is:


* fonts-noto-core gets installed by default. How? Because it's first in 
this list:


  $ apt-cache depends fontconfig-config | grep fonts
   |Depends: fonts-noto-core
   |Depends: fonts-dejavu-core
   |Depends: fonts-liberation
   |Depends: fonts-croscore
   |Depends: fonts-freefont-otf
   |Depends: fonts-freefont-ttf
   |Depends: fonts-urw-base35
Depends: fonts-texgyre

* fontconfig prefers Noto for sans-serif and serif, while it prefers 
DejaVu for monospace.


Hence the current defaults for latin scripts are:

sans-serif   Noto Sans
serifNoto Serif
monospaceDejaVu Sans Mono (or Noto Mono if fonts-dejavu-mono is not 
installed)


Note that that differs from Debian 12. In Debian 12 with GNOME, for 
instance, fonts-noto-core is not installed by default, but 
fonts-noto-mono is (because of a long chain of "Recommends:"). At the 
same time fontconfig prefers Noto also for monospace, which lead to 
these defaults:


sans-serif   DejaVu Sans
serifDejaVu Serif
monospaceNoto Sans Mono

I think that is the situation which lead to some reactions in bug 
reports in the beginning of the year. Several users expressed their 
dissatisfaction with the switch from DejaVu Sans Mono to Noto Sans Mono. 
And in response to that the default monospace font has been changed back 
to DejaVu Sans Mono in trixie.


But let us discuss the two questions above.


Should fonts-noto-core be installed by default?
---
Personally I think it should. The primary reason is that fonts-noto-core 
offers a broad coverage of Unicode characters, and the quality is in 
many cases superior to the free alternatives. Ask for instance an Arabic 
or Sinhala speaking user.


To really make use of a Noto font, the font configuration may need to be 
tweaked. But having it installed is the basic prerequisite, and I think 
it makes sense that Debian as an internationally spread OS provides 
fonts of good quality for most languages.


There is a problem with fonts-noto-core, though, as several people have 
mentioned already: For non-LCG scripts it provides one font per script. 
And there are quite a few of those. So for a user, who wants to actively 
and often select font in a font picker, the list of font options gets 
horribly long.


Personally I see that as a shortcoming in the font pickers. They ought 
to offer some "favorites" functionality, in the same manner as it works 
with keyboard layouts. Unfortunately they don't, at least as far as I know.


So we have a conflict of goals here. The good news is that a user who 
speaks some latin language, and who thinks it's important to be able to 
easily select font directly in various applications, can do:


apt purge fonts-noto-core

But the many fonts is not only a disadvantage. It allows you to prefer 
Noto fonts for some non-latin scripts, and other fonts for other ditto. 
This flexibility is effectively blocked if DejaVu Sans, where everything 
is bundled into the same font, is installed and default.



Which font should fontconfig prefer?

Since it already has been changed back to DejaVu Sans Mono for 
monospace, let's talk about sans-serif/serif here.


Which font looks best? Noto, DejaVu, or something else? Apparently it's 
primarily a matter of personal preferences. Personally I'm not very 
sensitive, and I find several available fonts acceptable.


Things which speak for Noto is that it's being maintained upstream, it's 
preferred by fontconfig upstream, and several other distros have choosen 
Noto.


One thing I would like to say here is that when comparing different 
fonts, you need to be attentive to the font rendering settings. As an 
example I think that enabling 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf is a good idea for 
many screens when using Noto fonts.


--
Rgds,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Bobby de Vos (2023-09-13 18:47:22)
> On 2023-09-12 03:09, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > Quoting Gioele Barabucci (2023-09-12 09:19:26)
> >> On 12/09/23 08:24, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> >>> Instead, even
> >>> the fonts-noto-core package installs a full pack of 268 (!) font files.
> >>> This is discussed in detail in #983291 [1].
> >>
> >> The issues is not that there are too many files, but that these files
> >> become extra entries in font pickers (1 entry for every ~3 files).
> >>
> >> Why not collapse all these font files into a few new font files using
> >> fontforge or a variant of nototools's merge_fonts.py?
> >>
> >> For example Noto Serif {Ahom, Bengali, Devanagari, Malayalam, Tamil,
> >> Thai, …} could be merged into "Noto Serif Asia". Then, Noto * {Africa,
> >> America, Asia, Europe, Oceania, Symbols} could be shipped in the
> >> fonts-noto-aggregated package and their entries added to Debian's
> >> fontconfig as default fallbacks. This would greatly alleviate the
> >> problem of having too many entries in the font pickers, yet provide the
> >> same coverage of fonts-noto-core.
> > 
> > Please discuss that proposal with the Noto project upstream, not here.
> > 
> > My understanding (and I believe documented somewhere too, e.g. in the
> > Noto CJK subproject which is the most extreme in amount of glyphs) is
> > that it is technically impossible to join all glyphs due to limitations
> > of the font formats.
> 
> Indeed, font have a 64K limit on the number of glyphs. There is a 
> proposal[1] to increase this limit, and it is being discussed [2].
> 
> Merging some (so not all, so the 64K limit is not reached) of the Noto 
> fonts together might work. In addition to merging the sets of glyphs, 
> you would also need to merge the OpenType layout data in the GSUB and 
> GPOS tables.
> 
> And the tool[3] from Google looks like it might handle the GSUB/GPOS 
> merging.
> 
> Different fonts (say for Devanagari and Arabic) might have different 
> line spacing, a merged font would have to choose which line spacing to 
> use. As a result, the line spacing in the font might be too loose, or it 
> might be too tight, resulting in clipping and/or inter-line clashes 
> depending on which script was being displayed. The source for the tool 
> mentions this line spacing issue.
> 
> And yes, Noto provides separate fonts for (in this example) Arabic and 
> Devanaragi) even though the top of the Noto website[4] says "Noto: A 
> typeface for the world" (sort of implying one font) but further down the 
> page it says "Noto is a collection of high-quality fonts" (plural)
> 
> I am curious about the comment above "1 entry for every ~3 files" In 
> LibreOffice Writer (7.5.6) on my Ubuntu (22.04) system at least, 
> installing a variable font results in fewer lines in a font picker that 
> installing a bunch of static fonts.

Thanks for those details, Bobby.

Let me however reiterate my main point of previous post, which still
stands:

  Please discuss that proposal with the Noto project upstream, not here.


Kind regards,

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
 * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Bobby de Vos]

On 2023-09-12 05:40, Adam Borowski wrote:

You don't need to physically merge font files, fontconfig is fine with many
fonts sharing the same name.  You can't then request a specific font, but
taking missing glyphs from others still works.

(Haven't looked at this in a while, would need to test.)


I am curious if this method would cause ligatures (which are essential 
in many non-roman scripts) to still form. For the ligatures to display, 
the OpenType shaping engine needs to see a run of text (all the 
codepoints that make up a ligature) with a specific font that has the 
needed GSUB rules.


If the missing glyphs are taken one by one, I would have thought that 
ligature formation would then be broken.


--
Bobby de Vos
/bobby_de...@sil.org/

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Bobby de Vos]

On 2023-09-12 03:09, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

Quoting Gioele Barabucci (2023-09-12 09:19:26)

On 12/09/23 08:24, Fabian Greffrath wrote:

Instead, even
the fonts-noto-core package installs a full pack of 268 (!) font files.
This is discussed in detail in #983291 [1].


The issues is not that there are too many files, but that these files
become extra entries in font pickers (1 entry for every ~3 files).

Why not collapse all these font files into a few new font files using
fontforge or a variant of nototools's merge_fonts.py?

For example Noto Serif {Ahom, Bengali, Devanagari, Malayalam, Tamil,
Thai, …} could be merged into "Noto Serif Asia". Then, Noto * {Africa,
America, Asia, Europe, Oceania, Symbols} could be shipped in the
fonts-noto-aggregated package and their entries added to Debian's
fontconfig as default fallbacks. This would greatly alleviate the
problem of having too many entries in the font pickers, yet provide the
same coverage of fonts-noto-core.


Please discuss that proposal with the Noto project upstream, not here.

My understanding (and I believe documented somewhere too, e.g. in the
Noto CJK subproject which is the most extreme in amount of glyphs) is
that it is technically impossible to join all glyphs due to limitations
of the font formats.


Indeed, font have a 64K limit on the number of glyphs. There is a 
proposal[1] to increase this limit, and it is being discussed [2].


Merging some (so not all, so the 64K limit is not reached) of the Noto 
fonts together might work. In addition to merging the sets of glyphs, 
you would also need to merge the OpenType layout data in the GSUB and 
GPOS tables.


And the tool[3] from Google looks like it might handle the GSUB/GPOS 
merging.


Different fonts (say for Devanagari and Arabic) might have different 
line spacing, a merged font would have to choose which line spacing to 
use. As a result, the line spacing in the font might be too loose, or it 
might be too tight, resulting in clipping and/or inter-line clashes 
depending on which script was being displayed. The source for the tool 
mentions this line spacing issue.


And yes, Noto provides separate fonts for (in this example) Arabic and 
Devanaragi) even though the top of the Noto website[4] says "Noto: A 
typeface for the world" (sort of implying one font) but further down the 
page it says "Noto is a collection of high-quality fonts" (plural)


I am curious about the comment above "1 entry for every ~3 files" In 
LibreOffice Writer (7.5.6) on my Ubuntu (22.04) system at least, 
installing a variable font results in fewer lines in a font picker that 
installing a bunch of static fonts.


[1] 
https://github.com/harfbuzz/boring-expansion-spec/blob/main/beyond-64k.md


[2] https://github.com/harfbuzz/boring-expansion-spec/issues/105

[3] 
https://github.com/notofonts/nototools/blob/main/nototools/merge_fonts.py


[4] https://fonts.google.com/noto

--
Bobby de Vos
/bobby_de...@sil.org/

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[nick black]

The Wanderer left as an exercise for the reader:
> I have been considering how best to test this in something like a live
> environment, and have not yet settled on something that seems both
> sufficiently doable in my setup and also sufficiently likely to produce
> accurate results about my observations.

I've been doing a lot of font comparison on arbitrary text using
font-manager recently, if that's all you need.

-- 
nick black -=- https://www.nick-black.com
to make an apple pie from scratch,
you need first invent a universe.


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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[The Wanderer]

On 2023-09-12 at 02:28, Fabian Greffrath wrote:

> Hi Wanderer,
> 
>> Rather than discussing only Noto vs. DejaVu, is there any
>> possibility of reintroducing Bitstream Vera as a default-font
>> option (even if with a low priority), for systems which have that
>> installed?
> 
> can you even see a difference between Bitstream Vera and DejaVu? The 
> latter should be identical to the former, but with wider glyph 
> coverage.

The fact that I am not sufficiently certain about my answer to that
question is the reason why I had not previously replied since Gunnar
pointed out the connection.

When I was flailing about after the introduction of Noto as first
preference, one of the steps I wound up taking appears to have been the
removal of the fonts-noto package. If that had been enough to restore
the look I was going for (as presumably would have been the case if
DejaVu were enough to provide that look), then presumably I would not
have felt the need to keep digging and experimenting, much less to have
gone so far as a user-profile custom copy of 60-latin.conf in order to
reintroduce Bitstream Vera. Unfortunately, six months or so later, my
memory of the specifics of what I did or how I reacted at each stage of
the experimenting is not clear enough for me to claim that I can in fact
see a difference between the two.

In looking at depictions of DejaVu glyphs and Bitstream Vera glyphs
online, I have seen apparent inconsistencies; some such depictions I
found seem at least superficially identical, but I found at least one
case where I saw visual differences that I suspect I would find
off-putting if used in "production" rendering.

I have been considering how best to test this in something like a live
environment, and have not yet settled on something that seems both
sufficiently doable in my setup and also sufficiently likely to produce
accurate results about my observations.

If I can find such a method, and it does show that I see differences,
then I will probably return and report about that. If I do not see
differences, then I may either return and report that (and apologize for
the noise, and probably drop the custom config file for the future), or
just remain silent to avoid adding further noise. If I cannot find such
a method, then I will probably remain silent - and continue using the
custom config file - until such time as that changes.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Adam Borowski]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 09:19:26AM +0200, Gioele Barabucci wrote:
> On 12/09/23 08:24, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> > the fonts-noto-core package installs a full pack of 268 (!) font files.
> > This is discussed in detail in #983291 [1].
> 
> The issues is not that there are too many files, but that these files become
> extra entries in font pickers (1 entry for every ~3 files).
> 
> Why not collapse all these font files into a few new font files using
> fontforge or a variant of nototools's merge_fonts.py?

You don't need to physically merge font files, fontconfig is fine with many
fonts sharing the same name.  You can't then request a specific font, but
taking missing glyphs from others still works.

(Haven't looked at this in a while, would need to test.)


Meow!
-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ Latin:   meow 4 characters, 4 columns,  4 bytes
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Greek:   μεου 4 characters, 4 columns,  8 bytes
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ Runes:   ᛗᛖᛟᚹ 4 characters, 4 columns, 12 bytes
⠈⠳⣄ Chinese: 喵   1 character,  2 columns,  3 bytes <-- best!

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Gioele Barabucci (2023-09-12 09:19:26)
> On 12/09/23 08:24, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> > Instead, even
> > the fonts-noto-core package installs a full pack of 268 (!) font files.
> > This is discussed in detail in #983291 [1].
> 
> The issues is not that there are too many files, but that these files 
> become extra entries in font pickers (1 entry for every ~3 files).
> 
> Why not collapse all these font files into a few new font files using 
> fontforge or a variant of nototools's merge_fonts.py?
> 
> For example Noto Serif {Ahom, Bengali, Devanagari, Malayalam, Tamil, 
> Thai, …} could be merged into "Noto Serif Asia". Then, Noto * {Africa, 
> America, Asia, Europe, Oceania, Symbols} could be shipped in the 
> fonts-noto-aggregated package and their entries added to Debian's 
> fontconfig as default fallbacks. This would greatly alleviate the 
> problem of having too many entries in the font pickers, yet provide the 
> same coverage of fonts-noto-core.

Please discuss that proposal with the Noto project upstream, not here.

My understanding (and I believe documented somewhere too, e.g. in the
Noto CJK subproject which is the most extreme in amount of glyphs) is
that it is technically impossible to join all glyphs due to limitations
of the font formats.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
 * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

Re: Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Fabian Greffrath]

Hi Gioele,

> For example Noto Serif {Ahom, Bengali, Devanagari, Malayalam, Tamil,
> Thai, …} could be merged into "Noto Serif Asia". Then, Noto *
> {Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Oceania, Symbols} could be shipped in
> the fonts-noto-aggregated package and their entries added to Debian's
> fontconfig as default fallbacks. This would greatly alleviate the
> problem of having too many entries in the font pickers, yet provide
> the same coverage of fonts-noto-core.

nice idea! But this is something that has to happen upstream. I don't
think the Debian package is the right place to implement such a
disruptive change.

Cheers,

 - Fabian



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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gioele Barabucci]

On 12/09/23 08:24, Fabian Greffrath wrote:

Instead, even
the fonts-noto-core package installs a full pack of 268 (!) font files.
This is discussed in detail in #983291 [1].


The issues is not that there are too many files, but that these files 
become extra entries in font pickers (1 entry for every ~3 files).


Why not collapse all these font files into a few new font files using 
fontforge or a variant of nototools's merge_fonts.py?


For example Noto Serif {Ahom, Bengali, Devanagari, Malayalam, Tamil, 
Thai, …} could be merged into "Noto Serif Asia". Then, Noto * {Africa, 
America, Asia, Europe, Oceania, Symbols} could be shipped in the 
fonts-noto-aggregated package and their entries added to Debian's 
fontconfig as default fallbacks. This would greatly alleviate the 
problem of having too many entries in the font pickers, yet provide the 
same coverage of fonts-noto-core.


Regards,

--
Gioele Barabucci

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Fabian Greffrath]

Hi Gunnar,

> 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.

as has already been stated elsewhere, fontconfig upstream's move to
Noto as the default font has most probably not been done for
aesthetical reasons. That is, it is not the "most beautiful font" that
people "like better" then DejaVu, but the single usable fallback font
with the widest glyph coverage.

However, I think that the acceptance - or rather lack thereof - of the
Noto fonts in Debian has indeed to do with the way they are currently
packaged. There is no pendant to the fonts-dejavu-core package which
only installs the generic serif and sans-serif flavors. Instead, even
the fonts-noto-core package installs a full pack of 268 (!) font files.
This is discussed in detail in #983291 [1].

So, if asked for my personal opinion, I could live with DejaVu Mono as
the default monospace font (for aesthetical reasons) and Noto Sans and
Serif as the default sans-serif and serif fonts (for pragmatic
reasons), respectively, but only if the latter are packaged separately.

Cheers,

 - Fabian

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983291


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Re: Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Fabian Greffrath]

Hi Wanderer,


> Rather than discussing only Noto vs. DejaVu, is there any possibility
> of
> reintroducing Bitstream Vera as a default-font option (even if with a
> low priority), for systems which have that installed?

can you even see a difference between Bitstream Vera and DejaVu? The
latter should be identical to the former, but with wider glyph
coverage.

Cheers,

 - Fabian



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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Paul Wise]

On Sun, 2023-09-10 at 11:34 -0400, The Wanderer wrote:

> Rather than discussing only Noto vs. DejaVu, is there any possibility of
> reintroducing Bitstream Vera as a default-font option (even if with a
> low priority), for systems which have that installed?

IIRC DejaVu is a fork of and similar to Bitstream Vera, the latter is
unmaintained so it makes some sense to drop it in favour of DejaVu.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-10 16:04, Praveen Arimbrathodiyil wrote:

On 10 September 2023 2:38:38 am IST, Gunnar Hjalmarsson
 wrote:

* 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.)


For Malayalam, we prefer traditional script font by default. Noto
Malayalam coverage is not in traditional script.


Noted. So if we ever get that far, let's not touch the 
task-malayalam-desktop package.


And @FC Stegerman: Point taken. :) The reason why I talk so little about 
CJK is that fonts-noto-cjk appears to be the obvious choice for CJK 
scripts nowadays.


--
Rgds,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2023-09-10 17:34, The Wanderer wrote:

I am not sure why DejaVu is the alternative default under
discussion.

Prior to the switch to Noto, the default preferred font family
(listed first in /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-latin.conf) was not DejaVu;
that was, as it still is, listed as the second preference. The font
family listed as the first preference was Bitstream Vera.


The explanation is that upstream dropped Bitstream Vera separately.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/commits/main/conf.d/60-latin.conf

And even if upstream was not very clear about the reason, the Debian bug 
 provides some reasons.


So compared with bullseye you can say that Bitstream Vera was replaced 
with Noto in 60-latin.conf.



If the intended design is that people who prefer one of the
lower-priority entries in the 60-latin.conf lists should remove the
packages that provide the fonts listed with higher preference
priority, then it seems problematic for the former highest-priority
option to be omitted entirely.


Nah.. If you want to use a font — any font — other than the one Debian 
promotes as "default", you can for instance


* prefer it in a code snippet in ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d (some 
desktops provide GUIs for the purpose)


* cherry pick it in respective application

That is true irrespective of whether it's mentioned in 60-latin.conf or 
not. No need to uninstall anything only for that reason.


--
Rgds,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Thanks for your replies!

On 2023-09-10 05:23, Paul Wise wrote:

Personally, I found Noto Mono to be very ugly in comparison to the
DejaVu fonts that I was used to,


You did notice that we reversed to DejaVu Sans Mono for monospace, right?

https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/6fae069d


Related discussion on the various IRC channels suggested that:

Noto is meant to be a fallback font (something like unifont but not
using bitmaps) not the default font for all or any languages.


Is the reasoning behind that position published anywhere?

One reason I ask is because upstream made Noto default, so did Fedora, 
so is Ubuntu about to do, and so did some Ubuntu flavors a while ago.


Possibly the way the Noto fonts are packaged in Debian has something to 
do with it. We have currently no way to install the Latin (or more 
precisely the LCG — Latin, Cyrillic, Greek) fonts separately. This 
limitation is discussed in .



Noto makes the font selector useless because each alphabet shows up.


That is more or less true. A concern raised by M. Zhou too.

Also that is a consequence of the current situation with fonts-noto-core 
providing fonts for all scripts, and you can't choose to install e.g. 
LCG only.



Apparently the Noto meta package installs 700+ MB of font data, which
seems a bit excessive to some folks.


Hmm.. While that may be true for the fonts-noto meta package, please 
note that it's the fonts-noto-core package for sans-serif and serif 
(installed-size 43,6 MB) I argue for.


On 2023-09-10 06:30, M. Zhou wrote:

Aesthetic matter differs from person to person. As font can be seen as
kind of artwork, can we make a pool for the default font just like our
wallpaper?


Such a change would not be trivial. Maybe suitable for a feature request.

--
Rgds,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[FC Stegerman]

* Gunnar Hjalmarsson  [2023-09-09 23:08]:
> [...] fonts-noto-core covers "all" scripts [...]

Just want to point out it doesn't cover CJK, which ironically is the
one thing I actually use and prefer Noto for as I definitely prefer
DejaVu (or Bitstream Vera) for latin fonts, which is why I've been
overriding the new default.

- Fay

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[The Wanderer]

On 2023-09-09 at 23:23, Paul Wise wrote:

> On Sat, 2023-09-09 at 23:08 +0200, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Personally, I found Noto Mono to be very ugly in comparison to the 
> DejaVu fonts that I was used to, so my knee-jerk reaction was to 
> override the fontconfig settings to avoid all of the Noto fonts.

While I concur and have done the same, I am not sure why DejaVu is the
alternative default under discussion.

Prior to the switch to Noto, the default preferred font family (listed
first in /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-latin.conf) was not DejaVu; that was, as
it still is, listed as the second preference. The font family listed as
the first preference was Bitstream Vera.

The change made appears to have been, not moving Noto up in the list
from a lower position, but rather replacing Bitstream Vera entirely with
Noto.

I have just grabbed version 2.13.1-4.5 of fontconfig-config from
snapshots.debian.org to confirm. Comparing preference order
60-latin.conf from that version against the one from the package version
currently installed on my system, I see:

 2.13.1-4.5   2.14.2-4
Bitstream Vera   firstnot listed
DejaVu   second   second
Noto not listed   first


If the intended design is that people who prefer one of the
lower-priority entries in the 60-latin.conf lists should remove the
packages that provide the fonts listed with higher preference priority,
then it seems problematic for the former highest-priority option to be
omitted entirely.

Rather than discussing only Noto vs. DejaVu, is there any possibility of
reintroducing Bitstream Vera as a default-font option (even if with a
low priority), for systems which have that installed?


For myself, I have worked around this (since March, when I first noticed
the change) by copying the 2.13.1-4.5 version of 60-latin.conf into
~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/. That approach appears to mean that I will
miss out on any potentially-desirable changes that may be introduced in
this file in the future, but it was the only way of bringing back
Bitstream Vera as the preferred default font (without
risking having the changes overwritten on a future package update) that
I could find.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Praveen Arimbrathodiyil]

On 10 September 2023 2:38:38 am IST, Gunnar Hjalmarsson  
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.
>
>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.
>
>While this message was crossposted to several mailing lists, since the topic 
>affects multiple packages and teams, I suggest that the replies are posted to 
>the general debian-devel list only.
>
>
>The current situation
>-
>From a Debian POV, the effective default font for sans-serif and serif depends 
>on whether the fonts-noto-core package is installed or not. For some desktop 
>environments that package is pulled by default. As regards the GNOME desktop, 
>fonts-noto-core is not installed by default with Debian 12 stable, but it does 
>get pulled if you install trixie via a weekly build ISO.
>
>The change as regards GNOME is probably my fault:
>
>https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/5aa10dde
>
>While I thought that that commit wouldn't change much in practice, since there 
>typically are other fonts which satisfy the fontconfig-config alternative 
>dependency list, it probably does make a difference since fontconfig is 
>installed early during the installation process.
>
>Some bugs were filed early this year, where people expressed some 
>dissatisfaction. The strongest objections were about the change of the 
>monospace font. (fonts-noto-mono is included by default also in Debian 12 
>stable with GNOME.) So I addressed that in trixie via a Debian level patch 
>which changes the default monospace font back to DejaVu Sans Mono.
>
>So at this time we have these preferences in 60-latin.conf:
>
>sans-serif   Noto Sans
>serifNoto Serif
>monospaceDejaVu Sans Mono
>
>So far so good. Mostly good IMHO. I can mention that I'm also working with 
>fonts in Ubuntu, and similar changes will happen in Ubuntu 23.10.
>
>
>Some steps to consider
>--
>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.)

For Malayalam, we prefer traditional script font by default. Noto Malayalam 
coverage is not in traditional script.

>* Maybe it would be motivated to recommend fonts-noto-core in the umbrella 
>package task-desktop too. While fontconfig-config seems to pull 
>fonts-noto-core for new installs, I suspect that it wouldn't be pulled during 
>an upgrade to Debian trixie.
>
>* System admins have the option to do "dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config" and 
>that way control some fontconfig symlinks affecting things like hinting and 
>subpixel rendering. As regards the related templates file I recently made a 
>tiny change that appeared to be necessary:
>
>https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/45d8eda0
>
>but I suspect that the feature may need an overhaul also in other respects if 
>we change the default font.
>
>* I've noticed the fonts-recommended bug https://bugs.debian.org/1051314, 
>which rightly points out the need to consider Noto in that context.
>
>* Almost 3 years have passed since the fonts-noto source package was last 
>updated from upstream. A new update with latest upstream is desirable.
>
>
>Looking forward to your response.
>

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[M. Zhou]

On Sun, 2023-09-10 at 11:23 +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Sat, 2023-09-09 at 23:08 +0200, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Personally, I found Noto Mono to be very ugly in comparison to the
> DejaVu fonts that I was used to, so my knee-jerk reaction was to
> override the fontconfig settings to avoid all of the Noto fonts.
> I haven't yet evaluated the non-monospace Noto fonts though.
> 
> Related discussion on the various IRC channels suggested that: 
> 
> Noto is meant to be a fallback font (something like unifont but
> not using bitmaps) not the default font for all or any languages.
> 
> Noto makes the font selector useless because each alphabet shows up.
> Apparently fixing this requires changing the OpenType file format.
> 
> Apparently the Noto meta package installs 700+ MB of font data,
> which seems a bit excessive to some folks.
> 
> Some folks are setting explicit fonts in applications they use to
> avoid
> relying on system defaults and also seeing changes to those defaults.
> 

I have similar personal feelings. Aesthetic matter differs from person
to person. As font can be seen as kind of artwork, can we make a pool
for the default font just like our wallpaper?

Noto is usually annoying to me. It provides too many "Noto .*" fonts
in whatever software which shows you a font selection menu.
It is likely that at least 1/3 of the whole fonts menu will be
overwhelmed by the Noto .* fonts that I'll never use, even
if I only keep fonts-noto-core and fonts-noto-cjk.

The number of fonts is overwhelming especially when I frequently
change the font in software like libreoffice, inkscape, etc.
I usually end up deleting the ttf files that I will never need.

Just a negative vote on Noto. Anything else is better.

Re: Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Paul Wise]

On Sat, 2023-09-09 at 23:08 +0200, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:

> 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.

Personally, I found Noto Mono to be very ugly in comparison to the
DejaVu fonts that I was used to, so my knee-jerk reaction was to
override the fontconfig settings to avoid all of the Noto fonts.
I haven't yet evaluated the non-monospace Noto fonts though.

Related discussion on the various IRC channels suggested that: 

Noto is meant to be a fallback font (something like unifont but
not using bitmaps) not the default font for all or any languages.

Noto makes the font selector useless because each alphabet shows up.
Apparently fixing this requires changing the OpenType file format.

Apparently the Noto meta package installs 700+ MB of font data,
which seems a bit excessive to some folks.

Some folks are setting explicit fonts in applications they use to avoid
relying on system defaults and also seeing changes to those defaults.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Default font: Transition from DejaVu to Noto

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

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.

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.


While this message was crossposted to several mailing lists, since the 
topic affects multiple packages and teams, I suggest that the replies 
are posted to the general debian-devel list only.



The current situation
-
From a Debian POV, the effective default font for sans-serif and serif 
depends on whether the fonts-noto-core package is installed or not. For 
some desktop environments that package is pulled by default. As regards 
the GNOME desktop, fonts-noto-core is not installed by default with 
Debian 12 stable, but it does get pulled if you install trixie via a 
weekly build ISO.


The change as regards GNOME is probably my fault:

https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/5aa10dde

While I thought that that commit wouldn't change much in practice, since 
there typically are other fonts which satisfy the fontconfig-config 
alternative dependency list, it probably does make a difference since 
fontconfig is installed early during the installation process.


Some bugs were filed early this year, where people expressed some 
dissatisfaction. The strongest objections were about the change of the 
monospace font. (fonts-noto-mono is included by default also in Debian 
12 stable with GNOME.) So I addressed that in trixie via a Debian level 
patch which changes the default monospace font back to DejaVu Sans Mono.


So at this time we have these preferences in 60-latin.conf:

sans-serif   Noto Sans
serifNoto Serif
monospaceDejaVu Sans Mono

So far so good. Mostly good IMHO. I can mention that I'm also working 
with fonts in Ubuntu, and similar changes will happen in Ubuntu 23.10.



Some steps to consider
--
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.)


* Maybe it would be motivated to recommend fonts-noto-core in the 
umbrella package task-desktop too. While fontconfig-config seems to pull 
fonts-noto-core for new installs, I suspect that it wouldn't be pulled 
during an upgrade to Debian trixie.


* System admins have the option to do "dpkg-reconfigure 
fontconfig-config" and that way control some fontconfig symlinks 
affecting things like hinting and subpixel rendering. As regards the 
related templates file I recently made a tiny change that appeared to be 
necessary:


https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/fontconfig/-/commit/45d8eda0

but I suspect that the feature may need an overhaul also in other 
respects if we change the default font.


* I've noticed the fonts-recommended bug 
https://bugs.debian.org/1051314, which rightly points out the need to 
consider Noto in that context.


* Almost 3 years have passed since the fonts-noto source package was 
last updated from upstream. A new update with latest upstream is desirable.



Looking forward to your response.

--
Cheers,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson