Changes/EnhancePersianFontSupport

Enhance Persian Font Support

Summary

This change aims to provide a consistent experience for those who use Fedora in Persian or write or read Persian text in Fedora.

Owner

• Name: Hedayat Vatankhah
• Email: <hedayat@fedoraproject.org>

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 37
• Last updated: 2022-08-01
• devel thread
• FESCo issue: #2801
• Tracker bug: #2095025
• Release notes tracker: #845

Detailed Description

Traditionally, DejaVu fonts were used for Persian text in Fedora consistently; and considering the lack of suitable free Persian fonts, it was an acceptable choice (although some considered it to not be beautiful enough).

With changes in Fedora fonts in recent releases (mainly, addition of Droid & Noto fonts to default installation), Fedora provides an inconsistent experience for users who use Persian text and makes a bad impression on users. There are at least three different fonts used in a default Fedora Workstation for Sans Persian text in different situations, one of which is actually considered a cursive font for Persian.

Additionally, now we have a number of free Persian fonts, which can be used to present a more beautiful experience for Persian text. This change aims to:

1. Provide a consistent default Sans font for Persian in Fedora, used in all appropriate places instead of multiple different fonts. Right now, the aim is to use Vazirmatn font as the default Persian font.
2. Add new free Persian fonts to Fedora to provide a better experience for users who need them.

Benefit to Fedora

Enhances the experience of users of Persian text in Fedora, by providing a beautiful font to be used by default consistently and to provide modern free Persian fonts for users.

Scope

• Proposal owners:

1. Package new free Persian fonts for Fedora (mainly Vazirmatn 2081539)
2. Make the selected font the default one for Persian
3. Try to find out why Firefox/Thunderbird doesn't follow system default font (optional) (mozilla #1770662)
4. Update Fedora comps.xml to install the default font for Persian (PR #742)
5. Provide PR for langpacks/lorax if needed for the new default Persian font (PR #19)

• Other developers:

1. Might need some fixes in Firefox/Thunderbird to follow system default font when it is selected
2. Might need changes in langpacks/lorax

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with Objectives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Default Persian font will be changed automatically on upgrades (if langpacks-fa package is installed).

How To Test

1. Make sure that vazirmatn-vf-fonts package is not installed. Log into Fedora Workstation in Persian (fa) locale. You should be able to observe DejaVu to be used by gnome, Firefox/Thunderbird use Noto Sans Arabic for tab headers, menus and some other texts in their UI, and any application (e.g. telegram-desktop from RPMFusion repositories) which needs either Open Sans or Driod Sans to use Driod Kufi fonts as show below:

Current State

2. Install the latest build of Fedora image with this change, or install vazirmatn-vf-fonts package manually. You should see the new font (Vazirmatn) to be used everywhere by default and to be used as the fallback for Open Sans & Driod Sans fonts rather than Driod Kufi. Ideally, it should include Thunderbird/Firefox; but even without them the results are still desired:

Acceptable Result

Ideal Result

User Experience

Users who read/write Persian text in Fedora are presented with a new more beautiful font used by default consistently in all applications.

Dependencies

No hard dependencies, but an optional change might be needed in some packages (Firefox/Thunderbird) to provide a more consistent experience.

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: We won't ship new fonts and we won't change the default font.
• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Documentation

More detailed background on the topic is provided in this email.