file dependencies and packages and [blocker] bugs

[Adam Jackson]

On Sat, 2008-03-01 at 08:08 +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Andrew Farris wrote:
> > Hans de Goede wrote:
> >> seth vidal wrote:
> >>> Don't you think we should be able to do something to make this situation
> >>> better or even rarer?
> >>
> >> Erm, no not really, these apps need a certain file to be in a certain 
> >> place, isn't that what filedeps are for?
> > 
> > Don't you think instead the application should be fixed to stop doing 
> > something so archaic as directly accessing font filenames where they are 
> > expected to be?
> 
> No its archaic to think that only gui apps using gtk / qt need fonts, 
> what about image libraries like for example php which can be used to 
> dynamically generate buttons for websites and in order todo this need 
> access to fonts to generate the labels on the buttons? This is just one 
> example there are many uses of fonts for which fontconfig is not the answer.

Until, of course, someone notices that the button labels so generated
look like crap because they don't kern right and they don't handle RTL
scripts.  So then you go ahead and link to pango for layout and cairo
for rendering, but then you still get bugs because the font doesn't have
all the glyphs that the user asked for, so you end up needing fontconfig
anyway to get the right set of fonts to cover all the glyphs you've been
asked for.

> >> I really believe all these packages should be fixed to stop shipping a 
> >> private copy of these fonts. The way todo this is to symlink to the 
> >> installed official versions, as the packages will actually look for 
> >> for example
> >> /usr/share/blobAndConquer/data/fonts/vera.ttf and then do their own 
> >> rendering (as overlay to a rendered game scene).
> > 
> > I just don't see why you would 'fix' the problem of shipping extra fonts 
> > by rigging them up with fake font files and filedeps (isn't this exactly 
> > what symlinking effectively is?).  As long as the apps are really 
> > requiring the fonts by a specific filename they should ship the file, or 
> > stop loading them that way.
> 
> This is just like shipping duplicate system libraries which we aren't 
> doing for good reasons.

If a game includes a static copy of a font, it probably relies on the
exact metrics in that font.  So using the system copy is likely to be
wrong once it changes metrics to look less terrible.

Unless, of course, it doesn't, in which case it almost certainly wants
the good layout and selection characteristics of pango + fontconfig.

- ajax