Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

I was trying to avoid fontconfig, but it caught me at the end. Trying
to figure out which languages in comps are supported by which font, to
be able to include them in the language group, I compared the list of
languages in F11's comps file with the orthography lists fontconfig
supports.

To my surprise, some were missing/problematic. The list is here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N/LanguageSupportCriteria/Missing_fontconfig

I also found quite a few problems with existing orth files in
fontconfig that I'm working on fixing: http://tinyurl.com/dbk6a8

Since fontconfig support is critical for any language Fedora claims to
support [1], I think we should remove the language groups from comps
file if we don't have a fontconfig orthography file for it. I went and
updated the language criteria page we have here, adding a fontconfig
step:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N/LanguageSupportCriteria

For the specific language cases, I went and filed upstream bugs
against fontconfig for all I could find, except for Berber, which is a
bit problematic by nature (language code used is actually for a family
of languages, glibc locales are incomplete, Latin/Tifinagh/Arabic
script division is not along country lines...).

This is a report. I would appreciate help and feedback, especially
your thoughts about fontconfig .orth requirements for claiming
language support in Fedora.

Re: Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

Le samedi 31 janvier 2009 à 23:42 -0800, Roozbeh Pournader a écrit :
> I was trying to avoid fontconfig, but it caught me at the end. Trying
> to figure out which languages in comps are supported by which font, to
> be able to include them in the language group, I compared the list of
> languages in F11's comps file with the orthography lists fontconfig
> supports.
> 
> To my surprise, some were missing/problematic. The list is here:
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N/LanguageSupportCriteria/Missing_fontconfig

I'd be very careful to redefine tagalog for example. The tagalog script
is definitely not latin and has a specific unicode block, iso 15924
script tag, and specific supporting fonts

http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Pmorrow_Tagalog_Doctrina_1593_fonts

IMHO we've been conflating too many different notions (country, region,
language, script) in a few short locale tags and what you see is just
the system breaking appart for non-mainstream languages/scripts.

> I also found quite a few problems with existing orth files in
> fontconfig that I'm working on fixing: http://tinyurl.com/dbk6a8

This is something for Behdad. I hear he's cutting a new fontconfig
version right now, you may want to catch him before he's done and the
projects wents back to its usual 6-8 months sleepiness ;).

> Since fontconfig support is critical for any language Fedora claims to

Re: Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd be very careful to redefine tagalog for example. The tagalog script
> is definitely not latin and has a specific unicode block, iso 15924
> script tag, and specific supporting fonts
>
> http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Pmorrow_Tagalog_Doctrina_1593_fonts

No worries. I know all that. According to the Unicode Standard, that
script has not been much used for Tagalog since mid-1700s. The Tagalog
script in Unicode is an archaic script only, mostly for scholarly use:

http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19846

> IMHO we've been conflating too many different notions (country, region,
> language, script) in a few short locale tags and what you see is just
> the system breaking appart for non-mainstream languages/scripts.

That's very true. I've been talking with Behdad to try to do a bit or
redesigning, and we had a few ideas, like this bug, trying to get BCP
47 into fontconfig and somehow solving the glibc locale naming
problem:

http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19869

I would appreciate your feedback. (Of course, we can't fix this in
this release.)

> This is something for Behdad. I hear he's cutting a new fontconfig

Re: Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

Le dimanche 01 février 2009 à 05:34 -0800, Roozbeh Pournader a écrit :
> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Nicolas Mailhot

> > What you want is to help the different contributors to a language group
> > to:
> > — identify other bits are missing
> > — ping in the right place so they get added
> >
> > Otherwise everyone will just wait for everyone else.
> 
> I'm sorry Nicolas, but I don't understand. Would you consider
> rewording? Are you saying that I should not have been trying to create
> the missing orth files myself? Or fix the buggy ones?

No, I'm saying completeness should not be a requirement to create a new
language group, but the aim should be to help people identify the
missing bits so they can ping someone else (like you:;)) to provide
them.

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Re: Lost in translation, part II: Lost in orthographies

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot@...> wrote:
> No, I'm saying completeness should not be a requirement to create a new
> language group, but the aim should be to help people identify the
> missing bits so they can ping someone else (like you:;)) to provide
> them.

Got it. I guess this really means I should try to document the
process, like the great documentation I'm seeing at the fonts sig!
(not that i can reach the quality ;))

Roozbeh

Re: koji build results

On Sun, 2009-02-01 at 14:25 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le dimanche 01 février 2009 à 18:36 +0530, Ankur Sinha a écrit :
> > hi,
> > 
> > I built packages on koji for the fonts..
> > 
> > only this one failed :
> > 
> > http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/getfile?taskID=1097228name=build.log
> > 
> > Says cannot find file.
> 
> No, it says it can't read the file, which probably just means that the
> fontforge version in F-9 is too old to build old standard.
> 
> “OldStandard-Bold.sfd is not in a known format (or is so badly corrupted
> as to be unreadable)”
> 
> Not a huge problem, F-9 is an old release, its users will just have to
> upgrade to F-10 to get your font. It's not worth getting worried about.
> 
> PS  do not hesitate to post to the list like others, you'll get more and
> better advice this way
> 

hi,

Shouldnt cf-bonveno-fonts have also come across this error while
building the f-9 package? That one built perfectly. Just a query.

Re: koji build results

Le dimanche 01 février 2009 à 19:20 +0530, Ankur Sinha a écrit :

> Shouldnt cf-bonveno-fonts have also come across this error while
> building the f-9 package? That one built perfectly. Just a query.

Bonveno sfds probably have not been created at the same time, and do not
use whatever new fontforge feature F-9 fontforge does not understand.

sfd is an evolving format that changes slightly every other fontforge
release.

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Re: koji build results

On Sun, 2009-02-01 at 15:03 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le dimanche 01 février 2009 à 19:20 +0530, Ankur Sinha a écrit :
> 
> > Shouldnt cf-bonveno-fonts have also come across this error while
> > building the f-9 package? That one built perfectly. Just a query.
> 
> Bonveno sfds probably have not been created at the same time, and do not
> use whatever new fontforge feature F-9 fontforge does not understand.
> 
> sfd is an evolving format that changes slightly every other fontforge
> release.
> 

okay,

Then ill just ignore the failure. 

regards,

Ankur

Thank you all for the packaging!

Dear list,

Karsten Wade just published this very nice article on his blog:
http://iquaid.org/2009/02/01/font-rock/

This is a tribute to the group efforts, and all the work you've
contributed to make fonts in Fedora shine. I know that for many of you
it was/is your first package, and how intimidating it is to start when
you have little distribution experience.

We've gone a long way from the negative packaging count of Fedora 7.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_inclusion_history

Thank you all, I'm certain Fedora 11 users will notice the difference!

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Finish Font Birth

Hey,

herewith I'm announcing the birth of two new fonts - vollkorn-fonts and
yanone-tagesschrift-fonts - in the fedora universe. I want to thank
anyone who helped me to do this (yes, I'm a bit proud of myself :p)

As usual I have some more questions:

- Comps integration: I'm going to register them only in 'fonts' as
'optional' (not in any xxx-support group because they only provide basic
latin glyphs). When I updated the xml-file I simply upload the changes
via CVS and that it? No need to tell special people about it or file
bugs?

- In case that I want to push updates: Can I use the common/cvs-import
script again? (This would be great because it makes things easy for me)

regards,
Paul

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