Foreword
This change is part of the list of cleanups discussed on the fonts and devel lists since november 2008. It is intended to make rules clearer for new and existing packagers, by rewording rules in a more succinct and imperative manner. Experience shows that too much leeway just results in packagers wasting time as they find new “interesting” ways to interpret the guidelines.
The change
It consists of rewording one paragraph of our current font policy.
Current wording
As noted in the Packaging Guidelines, Fedora packages should make every effort to avoid having multiple, separate, upstream projects bundled together in a single package. This applies equally to font packages.
Sometimes local groups publish a collection of fonts of different origins and different licensing in a single archive. In that case the interested packager SHOULD ask this upstream to break up its archive in different files. If upstream refuses the packager MAY base a single src.rpm on the collection archive, but he MUST make sure each bundled font set ends up in a different, appropriately licensed sub-package.
When a project is the upstream of several font families, which are all licensed the same way, and released on the same dates, in a single archive, the packager MAY create a single package. However the packager SHOULD consider splitting each font family in a different sub-package, so users can install only the font families they care about.
Multi-source packages are difficult to maintain and confusing to users. In addition:
- fonts are comparatively bulky, and big font packages will be blacklisted from live-cds and by low-bandwidth users.
- multi-family packages force users to install fonts they may not care of or even like just to get the other fonts in the package.
As a rule, try to produce small simple user-friendly mono-family font packages that will be easy to maintain (you should however strive to group different faces of the same font family in the same package). Avoid grouping unrelated fonts in a single package.
New wording
- A font family corresponds to one entry in GUI font lists. For example, DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Serif and DejaVu Sans Mono are three different font families.
- A font family is subdivided in faces or styles. DejaVu Sans Normal, DejaVu Sans Bold, DejaVu Sans Condensed Italic are three faces of the DejaVu Sans font family.
- A font-metadata aware tool such as gnome-font-viewer[1] or fontforge[2] can be used to check the font family name and the font face/style declared by a font file.
Packaging rules
- Fonts released upstream in separate archives MUST be packaged separately, unless they belong to the same font family.
- Packagers SHOULD ask upstreams that bundle fonts with other material such as application code to release each font family in a separate archive.
- Packagers SHOULD ask upstreams that bundle several font families in a single archive, to release each font family in a single archive.
When a project is the upstream of several font families, which are all licensed the same way, and released on the same dates, in a single archive
The Fonts SIG takes loving care of Fedora fonts. Please join this special interest group if you are interested in creating, improving, packaging, or just suggesting a font. Any help will be appreciated.