bugUnifont - Bugs: bug #48397, The "source" package...

 
 

bug #48397: The "source" package includes pre-compiled fonts

Submitted by:  None
Submitted on:  Mon 04 Jul 2016 11:14:03 AM UTC  
 
Category: NoneSeverity: 3 - Normal
Item Group: NoneStatus: Works For Me
Privacy: PublicAssigned to: Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Open/Closed: Closed

Discussion locked!

 

Fri 08 Jul 2016 03:56:35 AM UTC, comment #5:

What you are really looking for is a separate stripped-down unifont-source package. If some significant number of people (certainly more than one person) requests a separate package that is a purely source distribution, I will consider it.

I broke GRUB when I created my first Unifont package in 2008 that did not properly install a pre-compiled unifont.hex file as GRUB expected, so I am well aware of what was necessary to correct that. Back then and up to a couple of years ago, when there were separate issues with GRUB2 building .pf2 font files from Unifont BDF, PCF, and TrueType fonts, I worked with GRUB maintainers to work out a solution. Now I know that the Unifont package includes files that are compatible with what GRUB2 expects. I think those arrangements are still relevant.

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Project AdministratorIn charge of this item.
Wed 06 Jul 2016 03:24:26 PM UTC, comment #4:

Also, attempting to discredit someone's opinion merely because they haven't signed it with their legal name is nothing more than an ad hominem.

I'm not convinced that you went out of your way to reach out to all interested parties and ask about their opinions. So you can't really say it's just one person's desire. I also don't believe you asked yourself whether these past arrangements you mention are of any use now. Because I did my research and concluded they actually aren't.

Anonymous
Wed 06 Jul 2016 03:16:07 PM UTC, comment #3:

None of your arguments hold water.

Neither upstream GRUB Legacy nor GRUB2 downloads this source package directly; they look where the OS distribution put it, and they can build it from any source they like. Mentioning GRUB here is irrelevant. I looked at the Debian source package; it builds the font from the .hex files.

There are no compatibility concerns to worry about. The pre-compiled fonts are just useless baggage.

Anonymous
Wed 06 Jul 2016 01:48:19 AM UTC, comment #2:

Incidentally, Grub2 also expects a pre-built Unifont font file in the Unifont package (but not the .hex file anymore). This was an historical situation that I inherited and I am maintaining backwards compatibility with existing Grub installations. Again, this was after discussion in the Debian community, especially with Grub developers.

Grub and Grub2 trump the desire of one anonymous user bringing up a specialty corner case, and I have not seen any response from that anonymous person to my earlier comment. Therefore I am closing this bug report.

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Project AdministratorIn charge of this item.
Mon 04 Jul 2016 04:13:27 PM UTC, comment #1:

The current Unifont package arrangement of having a font/precompiled directory, but building font/compiled during building of the sources, was arrived at after discussion in the Debian community. That allows someone to verify that their .hex font file modifications are close to the source aggregated .hex files without having to go through the entire font building process. During building, the font is not built by default; only the programs in the src directory are built. To build the font, it is necessary to invoke make with "BUILDFONT=1" with Fontforge and its requisite dependencies installed first, then running "make precompiled" to re-create the precompiled directory. For someone who just wants to experiment with the .hex file, that is overkill.

The Unifont package used to just consist of a unifont.hex file, a unifont.bdf file, and the hexdraw Perl script. The current arrangement was an answer to those who wanted to somehow retain the ease of just accessing one large .hex file.

Most importantly, Grub needed one composite .hex file with all the Plane 0 glyphs and nothing else, because it used the unifont.hex file directly to display glyphs. I split the original unifont.hex file to allow patching in different ways. The initial motivation for that was to allow someone to replace the entire CJK block (which I wanted to do). Grub2 does not need that one large unifont.hex file, but there are still countless copies of the original Grub out there. So a huge factor in the current arrangement was making life easy for Grub.

I do intend to make changes in the Unifont package to greatly reduce its size but did not have time for this release.

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Project AdministratorIn charge of this item.
Mon 04 Jul 2016 11:14:03 AM UTC, original submission:

The compressed "source" package for GNU Unifont 9.0.01 takes around 18M; uncompressed, it's 55M. 48M of that space is taken by the precompiled fonts. After removing them, the compressed package should take an order of magnitude less space (I measured it to be 2.1M with the worst gzip compression setting).

Downloading pre-compiled fonts is an enormous waste of bandwidth for someone who, for example, wants to install a patched version of Unifont and isn't interested in pre-compiled fonts anyway.

Pre-compiled items should not be included in any release claiming to be a source package; they should be available separately. In the case of Unifont, each version can be already separately downloaded; bundling them together may be an option.

Anonymous

 

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    Follow 4 latest changes.

    Date Changed By Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced By
    Fri 08 Jul 2016 07:05:06 AM UTCunifoundryDiscussion LockUnlocked=>Locked
    Wed 06 Jul 2016 01:48:19 AM UTCunifoundryStatusNone=>Works For Me
      Open/ClosedOpen=>Closed
    Mon 04 Jul 2016 04:13:27 PM UTCunifoundryAssigned toNone=>unifoundry

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