Bug 562326 – Create fonts meta-package

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: CONFIRMED ---

[Description Richard Yao (RETIRED) 2015-10-05 14:30:13 UTC]

The ebuild currently has:

DOC_CONTENTS="
Some web pages may require additional fonts to display properly.
Try installing some of the following packages if some characters
are not displayed properly:
- media-fonts/arphicfonts
- media-fonts/bitstream-cyberbit
- media-fonts/droid
- media-fonts/ipamonafont
- media-fonts/ja-ipafonts
- media-fonts/takao-fonts
- media-fonts/wqy-microhei
- media-fonts/wqy-zenhei

Depending on your desktop environment, you may need
to install additional packages to get icons on the Downloads page.

For KDE, the required package is kde-apps/oxygen-icons.

For other desktop environments, try one of the following:
- x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme
- x11-themes/tango-icon-theme
"

It might be better for the fonts to have a meta-package that depends on these fonts and add a USE flag that pulls in that dependency. That way the world file would stay clean and if any additional fonts be needed in the future, portage will handle installing them for users.

[Comment 1 Mike Gilbert 2015-10-05 16:08:55 UTC]

A major problem with trying to define some kind of virtual is that fonts do not provide equivalent Unicode coverage. There would need to be some combination of USE flags for the various character planes, and we would need to figure out what character ranges each font provides.

[Comment 2 Mike Gilbert 2015-10-05 16:13:35 UTC]

I'm punting this to the fonts team; we would need something like a meta-package to be able to add such a dependency in chromium.

[Comment 3 Guilherme Amadio 2015-10-06 07:08:49 UTC]

How about depending on media-fonts/noto?

https://www.google.com/get/noto

Shouldn't that satisfy most of the language requirements?

[Comment 4 Mike Gilbert 2015-10-09 10:12:18 UTC]

(In reply to Guilherme Amadio from comment #3)

I'm sure there are a number of fonts that provide fairly wide unicode coverage. Depending on only one of them is incorrect.

[Comment 5 Guilherme Amadio 2015-10-10 08:10:59 UTC]

(In reply to Mike Gilbert from comment #4)
> (In reply to Guilherme Amadio from comment #3)
> 
> I'm sure there are a number of fonts that provide fairly wide unicode
> coverage. Depending on only one of them is incorrect.

I am not against creating a font meta-package. However, the main purpose of the Noto font project is exactly making a font that supports all languages with a consistent look, so I thought depending on it is probably a good idea. We could start the meta package with a dependency on Noto only, and add more fonts as needed later, although that will probably not be necessary. What do you think?