[Hamara-devel] Fonts packaged with Hamara

Wed Oct 21 18:17:23 BST 2015

Sam Sayer
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> On 21 Oct 2015, at 17:29, shirish <shirish at hamaralinux.org> wrote:
> 
> in-line :-
> 
> On Wednesday 21 October 2015 09:02 PM, Sam Sayer wrote:
>> My point here is compatibility - in an ideal world, no-one would use Word and the awful fonts it installs - perhaps it is the OS fallbacks that may be the issue here?
> 
> Probably. For office situations, probably the default one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Libertine is good enough . I do not know if hamara has linuxlibertine installed by default in hamara, in Debian it isn't and you have to install it separately :( which makes for a somewhat poorer experience a bit.

Libertine is fine as a Times replacement, but the default for Word is Arial / Calibri so needs to be sans-serif Liberation Sans as suggested
> 
> Btw what platform are you using, are you running hamara, Debian, some GNU/Linux distribution or something else ?

I use Mac OS predominantly, but have Hamara running too. In the most part, because commercially I need to use Adobe products (clients often ask for the source files for a project - plus, Adobe is streets ahead for design software- at the moment…;) ) and have already been using native Apple software such as Motion and Logic for number of years. I am looking at Open Source alternatives though! (as my blog post suggests). Particularly Blender for animation / 3D.

A case point being - a while back I was asked to create a ‘Powerpoint’ document, which I duly did - which looked 99.9% the same if viewed on Windows (PowerPoint), Mac (both PowerPoint for Mac and Keynote) - but come to Libre Office on Linux - utterly different. They can all open .ppt files. So why did it look so different? The fonts - the letter spacing and x height was different, throwing the page into disarray.

I’d like to see a seamless experience on any OS - and to encourage FOSS over MS!

> 
>> Do we need to specify if not Arial, then Liberation Sans? If not Verdana, then DejaVu Sans? They are closest alternatives in each case. I can offer FOSS alternatives for the major ‘web-safe’ font groups.
>> 
>> So as in web development, we always set as ‘Helvetica’, Arial, Sans-serif which dictates the order of fallback, and in the case of Linux / Hamara - what is the ‘default’ sans-serif font?
> 
> I don't know but this is what fc-match gives when I try for the same.
> 
> $ fc-match -a Sans-Serif | head
> DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
> DejaVuSansCondensed.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Condensed"
> DejaVuSansCondensed.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Condensed"
> DejaVuSans-ExtraLight.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "ExtraLight"
> DejaVuSans-ExtraLight.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "ExtraLight"
> DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Bold"
> DejaVuSansCondensed-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Condensed Bold"
> DejaVuSansCondensed-Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Condensed Bold"
> DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Oblique"
> DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Oblique"
> 
> But the package itself is also not the default.
> 
> See below -
> 
> 
> $ aptitude show fonts-dejavu-core
> Package: fonts-dejavu-core
> State: installed
> Automatically installed: no
> Multi-Arch: foreign
> Version: 2.35-1
> Priority: optional
> Section: fonts
> Maintainer: Debian Fonts Task Force <pkg-fonts-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org>
> Architecture: all
> Uncompressed Size: 3,034 k
> Breaks: ttf-dejavu (< 2.20-1), ttf-dejavu-core (< 2.33+svn2514-2~)
> Replaces: ttf-dejavu (< 2.20-1), ttf-dejavu-core (< 2.33+svn2514-2~)
> Description: Vera font family derivate with additional characters
> DejaVu provides an expanded version of the Vera font family aiming for quality and broader Unicode coverage while retaining the original Vera style.
> DejaVu currently works towards conformance with the Multilingual European Standards (MES-1 and MES-2) for Unicode coverage. The DejaVu fonts provide serif, sans and monospaced variants.
> 
> This package only contains the sans, sans-bold, serif, serif-bold, mono and mono-bold variants. For additional variants, see the ttf-dejavu-extra package.
> 
> DejaVu fonts are intended for use on low-resolution devices (mainly computer screens) but can be used in printing as well.
> Homepage: http://dejavu-fonts.org/
> 
> As can be seen it is an 'optional' font but seems to be nearest or best for sans-serif.
> 
> 
> $ dpkg -L fonts-dejavu-core
> /.
> /usr
> /usr/share
> /usr/share/doc
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/BUGS
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/README
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/AUTHORS
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/copyright
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/langcover.txt.gz
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/status.txt.gz
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/changelog.Debian.gz
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/changelog.gz
> /usr/share/doc/fonts-dejavu-core/unicover.txt.gz
> /usr/share/fonts
> /usr/share/fonts/truetype
> /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu
> /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSerif.ttf
> /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf
> /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf
> /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf
> /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf
> /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf
> /etc
> /etc/fonts
> /etc/fonts/conf.d
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/57-dejavu-serif.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/57-dejavu-sans.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-serif.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/58-dejavu-lgc-sans-mono.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-sans.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-sans-mono.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/58-dejavu-lgc-sans.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/58-dejavu-lgc-serif.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.avail/20-unhint-small-dejavu-serif.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/57-dejavu-serif.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/57-dejavu-sans.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-serif.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/58-dejavu-lgc-sans-mono.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-sans.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-sans-mono.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/58-dejavu-lgc-sans.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/58-dejavu-lgc-serif.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf
> /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-unhint-small-dejavu-serif.conf
> 
> 
> The last are the configuration files for each font so the user can manipulate things a bit.

OK - so I guess we put Libertine Sans in as the default sans-serif if possible!
> 
> 
>> After a bit of further reading, it looks like the MS fonts are out of the picture anyway! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web>
>> 
>> I hope Comic Sans is eventually deleted from existence, on a side note...
>> 
>> In a commercial sense, compatibility is important - a brand has it’s chosen typefaces, and I almost always use Google Fonts now for their wide compatibility.
> 
> Know and agree with the idea that brand and a typeface being associated with them is important. Which one to use is totally upto you though as you are our designer and you would have to make some design choices for us. If you are asking the wider community which fonts would be good then the community might be able to help or vote if you have two or three fonts which you think are good enough and we can help on that, although as a designer you would be able to veto the same as you are the one who has to do all the branding, if you are not happy with a font choice you will not give your best.

Yes - the designer chooses brand typeface which is often a paid font, and typically you choose a ‘desktop’ one for internal use, which was typically Arial or Calibri etc. More and more designers are using Google Fonts as a de facto choice for body copy, so the ones I suggested are the most common. They cover a range of typeface categories and are widely used.

> 
>> The Ubuntu font is quite widely used now, indeed it is available through Google Fonts service. I used it in some branding once, come to think of it!
> 
> Right.
> 
>> What I would love to see, is fonts being embedded in such documents, in the same fashion that they are in PDFs. Cross-platform font compatibility is one of the banes of a designers life, which PDF partly solved many years back.
>> 
> 
> True agree with the above.
> 
>> 	

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