RFC: Making the xfs font server optional in Fedora Core and its derivatives.

[Mike A. Harris]

Michael Tiemann wrote:

>> In particular, xfs and core fonts does not fit well into the
>> One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) effort, or other Fedora derived
>> embedded distributions.  In these embedded systems, or
>> reduced computing environments if you will, every megabyte
>> of disk space and memory counts.  Shedding megs of stuff out
>> of the default OS installation is sure to reduce both the
>> memory footprint and disk footprint of the OS installation,
>> which is a net gain for these systems, and also for a lot
>> of the userbase out there that do not use any applications
>> which rely on core fonts.
>>
>> On the other hand, there are many applications included both
>> in Fedora Core, and in Fedora Extras, which do rely on the
>> core fonts system still, and are likely to rely on it for the
>> forseeable future.  There are also many 3rd party open source
>> and commercial applications, as well as custom in-house
>> applications that many users and/or companies rely on, and
>> will want to keep working in new OS releases.
> 
> Is it too late for this to be a major thrust of the Fedora Summer of
> Code projects?  Even if it is, I think that such changes create a
> tremendous amount of opportunity for new folks to step into new
> leadership roles.  I can imagine that at next years OSCON there will be
> a new crop of hackers who can proudly say "I cleaned up the font cruft
> in Project XYZ and now maintain its use of the new font system".
> 
> I also think that given all the stuff that's been going on in Fedora in
> support of server-side computing, it makes good sense to give some major
> priority (which can mean major leeway) to client-side computing.

I think it would be fantastic if someone were to tackle adding
fontconfig/Xft support to the various toolkits out there that
don't support it currently, and/or the various apps that use
core fonts directly, or are otherwise directly affected by it.

If someone is interested in organizing such a project of any
size, it would be a great service to the community, reaching
beyond Fedora even.

Another possibility is simply converting individual applications
that use Xaw/Xt/Motif/etc. to using GTK or Qt, or creating an
alternative implementation of said application.  We could then
start replacing the non-(GTK/Qt) based apps with their modern
equivalents once they're ready, and move the legacy versions
into Fedora Extras (assuming someone in the community desperately
wants to maintain them).

Any takers?

-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.