User:Tagoh/ChangesDraft/FontDependencies

Font Dependencies to Langpacks

Summary

There are font(:lang=...) auto-generated dependency for fonts packages. it is used as a dependency identifier to satisfy a certain language requirement. but this way didn't guarantee qualities because what fonts packages is going to be pulled in is unreliable.

So this proposes to replace it with langpacks instead, which has proper dependencies for fonts and improve the user experience around fonts with applications.

Owner

• Name: Akira TAGOH
• Email: tagoh@redhat.com
• Release notes owner:

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 32
• Last updated: 2019-12-17
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

The language based meta information about font dependency was introduced since Fedora 11. that was helpful to find out a font for missing glyphs through PackageKit and was useful for minority languages because we didn't have fonts packages for them so much. but the user experience wasn't that better under the certain condition.

Users can't predict what fonts will be installed. this may gives us worst result particularly when no fonts for the requested language is installed and/or is majority languages that has too many fonts such as English, because this logic doesn't guarantee the quality of fonts nor preferred fonts we expect to get installed by default. This random dependency sometimes introduces unexpected result too so that it's likely to happen that dependencies may be satisfied from external repositories. this may particularly be a problem when composing ISOs.

So this Changes proposal aims to improve the user experience around font dependencies by replacing it by Langpacks instead. Langpacks contains various dependencies to use for certain languages, including dependencies for default fonts. so it will resolves the above issues.

Benefit to Fedora

This proposal provides reliable, predictable, and consistencies in dependencies about fonts.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • Update fontpackages to drop font(:lang=...) dependency generator from script
  • Replace font(:lang=...) dependency with langpacks-core-... in packages
  • Update PackageKit to pull langpacks-core-... in instead of font(:lang=...)

• Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number (a check of an impact with Release Engineering is needed)
  • List of deliverables: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

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

Upgrade/compatibility impact

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

How To Test

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

User Experience

Users will see better quality of rendering on applications if they had font(:lang=...) dependency and fonts packages randomly has ever been installed.

Dependencies

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No
• Blocks product? product

Documentation

N/A (not a System Wide Change)