Hi,
There were some discussions about Noto CJK fonts in the ML and in the
comments of an SR: SR#446888
I want to summarize the concerns from different sides here:
1. the size limit of the DVD.
Due to the size limit, someone chose the SuperOTC format to distribute Noto CJK.
And it brought some troubles like:
Japanese glyphs will be always preferred because of its alphabetical order.
This was partially resolved using a specific fontconfig configuration,
which prepends the right order by lang. but this solution didn't take
into consideration for cases like "how to display CJK chars right in a
Latin environment".
We wanted to switch back to the OTF fonts, because it's the only way
to solve all related issues.
But we still didn't have a conclusion for the new font names. eg
google-noto-sans-cjksc-thin-font, google-noto-sans-cjk-thin-fonts,
google-noto-sans-cjk-basic-fonts...
Because we want to split the seldom used weights to save space for the DVD.
2. the attempt to make it default for CJK.
I think this need is growing today because Google released Noto Serif
and gave us the possibility to
replace the ancient "AR PL UMing" fonts
And the only concern for this attempt is: Japanese needs its
Demi-light instead of Regular/Medium weight. I think this can be
handled with fontconfig.
3. the conflicts between Adobe Source Han and Noto CJK
I received a bug report and I knew our packagers also prepared partial
support for CJK (TW and JP) from Source Han side.
This is duplicated actually. Because Google and Adobe actually used
the same source.
The only differences are the name and the Latin part.
Adobe used Source Sans for the Latin part, Google inhibited it (So
the two fonts are identical) but wrote a guideline to ask users to
override the Latin part with Noto Sans/Reboto.
So a new need is triggered. We need to write a new fontconfig to alias
Adobe Source Han by Noto CJK and handle the minor weight differences.
4. the symbol part.
openSUSE still used the old URW "Standard Symbol L" or "OpenSymbol"
from libreOffice to provide symbols.
But there're a few new modern and even colored symbol fonts available now:
* Noto provides "Noto Emoji"
* "EmojiOne Color"
* Deepin Linux also released a free symbol font "Deepin OpenSymbol"
which is 100% compatible with Wingdings on Windows
I think it's time to evaluate our choice for symbol fonts again.
#################################################
I'll address 3 and 4 in fonts-config package. for 1 and 2:
1. I removed CJK support from google-noto-fonts.
Because we really need a new namespace for CJK.
The scalable value and Provides needed to be handled separately and we
don't want to mess the generate-specfile.sh any more.
2. We need to introduce 4 sources (115mb each) to have the monospace font.
The region specific fonts are small (because each only covers one
region eg Japanese, which means you can't display any Chinese), but
they don't provide monospace fonts.
3. We need a new namespace for Noto Serif CJK.
Because it is new and shouldn't have those Provides/Obsoletes.
4. We need to have new names.
I want to write a new script to name the fonts to:
google-noto-(sans|serif)-cjk(sc|tc|ja|kr)-{weight}-font
That is, fully separate them first, and then use dummy packages:
google-noto-(sans|serif)-cjk(sc|tc|ja|kr)-(mini|full)
to group them again..
And our DVD will include google-noto-sans-cjk(sc|tc|ja|kr)-mini only.
which is about 35mb x 4 = 140mb.
and there'll be a new dummy package:
google-noto-sans-cjk
which requires google-noto-sans-cjksc-mini or google-noto-sans-cjkja-mini only.
because:
4.1 Latin people don't care the glyph difference between Chinese and
Japanese that much
4.2 each of the four mini package contains full coverage of CJK, so
you will not want to install
another one if you have one.
5 Noto Serif CJK
It'll be easy and don't need that detailed split because it's not an
UI font....it'll be just named:
google-noto-serif-cjk{sc|tc|ja|kr}-fonts which contains all seven weights.
Of course, font configurations are still needed for Japanese because
the Demi-light issue.
Thanks
Marguerite
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