Core fonts packaging guidelines writer WANTED

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Jeu 29 novembre 2007 11:09, Hans de Goede a écrit :
> Nicolas Mailhot wrote:

> And here is the problem, when you write "the level of abuse we've seen
> from core font users lately" below, I guess you mean mainly me, and I
> apologize as I indeed have wrongly blamed the font SIG for the current
> breakage.

My aim was not to blame anyone, and while particularly excessive your
reaction is fairly representative of the core font community so far.
(ignore changes, let things rot, blame others when they finish
breaking, and expect them to do the maintenance work in your stead).

> However the above alinea starting at "Do not fall ..." is simply not
> acceptable, there are 2 and only 2 options here:
> 1) Leave core font packages as they are, as that has worked well for
> years,

It hasn't worked well, the difference is that the magic fairies that
kept them working finaly left after numerous warnings enough was
enough, leaving the people who claimed there was no problem handle the
whole core fonts mess (since no one else used them anymore).

Like every other component of the distribution core fonts need
maintenance to keep working. The environment changes, if you want to
freeze it just install a Fedora 1 to 7 system. One of the changes is a
large group of users, OLPC, (that do actual work for the distro future
unlike frozen-in-time legacy apps) requested making core fonts
optional. Another is xfs was dumped. Yet another is the xorg version
we use changed, and the new version does not register core font
directories the same way. There are others I'm probably forgetting
now.

As a result leaving things as they are is not an option. Install
pre-fedora 8 core font packages in Fedora 8 and you'll see how well
they work in a current environment.

Do you really want me to comment on your choice of (quoting) "the new
guidelines are broken in that they do not offer a solution to the
problem this creates, so I say ignore them until this bug in the
guidelines gets fixed."?

(in other words intentionaly push the one solution you know conflicts
so someone else gets to document and fix the stuff your minority is
using)

Well I don't want to waste more time on this, my mail was addressed to
people who are actually willing to do some work to restore core fonts
to a maintained state. Please stand up. You'll get all the help the
Fonts SIG can extend to help you make your beloved legacy apps work.

I apologise to the lists for the flame spillovers.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot