Changing the default font in Fedora Core 6

Dimitris Glezos dimitris at glezos.com
Fri Jun 30 02:18:55 UTC 2006


Hello all.

Having read the thread that was active 2+ weeks ago "Changing the 
default font in Fedora Core 6" [1], I think that it's obvious that the 
Best Thing™ would be to include DejaVu in Core as soon as possible.

Translators work hard for translating fedora core, extras, the docs and 
the release notes, but the installer is absolutely unusable in some 
languages because the best font out there isn't included in the Core. 
Ambassadors work hard in event organizing and spreading the word about 
Fedora to new users, but one has to manually edit the fonts.conf file to 
get a usable desktop in > 1 languages. I am sad to say this, but I heard 
people using the words "unacceptable" and "proof that the community 
doesn't matter" for the fonts issues in Fedora. (For some screenshots, 
take a look at [2].)

Many people from this list agreed that we should include DejaVu. I 
believe that we should try our best to include it in the Core, 
definitely before Test 3 so that some testing gets done too. I don't 
know if someone is willing to transfer it to Core before Test 2 and I am 
not sure if the fontconfig patch to exclude characters from a font will 
be ready soon, or if it is even needed, since DejaVu LGU exists.

What I do know is that we should fix this problem that spoils the image 
of our distribution as soon as possible. Not only because it's simply 
the best free font out there, but because the community really needs it 
straight away. Other major distros like Suse and Ubuntu have already 
realized this, and while this decision is considered a no-brainer, we 
are still talking about it.

Thanks to Nicolas Mailhot, a package already exists in extras-devel, so 
most of the work is already done. Now, the only thing that remains (as I 
see it) is a Core maintainer to step forward.


-Dimitris Glezos

Fedora ambassador for Greece


[1]: 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-June/thread.html#00292
[2]: 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Teams/Greek/Issues#head-6355afab18e12a4bc80288e6476fbfecb8530a24


-- 
Dimitris Glezos
Jabber ID: glezos at jabber.org, PGP: 0xA5A04C3B
http://dimitris.glezos.com/

"He who gives up functionality for ease of use
loses both and deserves neither." (Anonymous)
--




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