font policy - maintainerless program

[Paul Hardy]

I have been getting ready to release a font plus sources and auxiliary
programs for Debian.  The Policy Manual requires using the
update-fonts-dir script when installing a font.

I was going to post a change to the update-fonts-dir script (so it
wouldn't complain that /usr/lib/X11/fonts doesn't exist -- that
directory is no longer part of a Debian release), and post a change to
the man page (to mention that -7 and --x11r7-layout options are now
no-ops present for historical reasons).  I had found this out earlier
posting on debian-devel.  The warning about a missing directory in
particular would give a user the impression that something could be
wrong with the system when in fact everything is fine.

Unfortunately, the BTS says that the package has no current
maintainer, and asks that bugs not be filed against it.

Is there another way we're supposed to post patches for a package with
no maintainer?  I don't have time to adopt it.

Alternatively, since the package is no longer maintained, can I ignore
that part of the Debian Policy Manual for a font, and just invoke
mkfontdir directly rather than update-fonts-dir?  mkfontdir works
perfectly, and update-fonts-dir just calls mkfontdir after some
pre-processing.

If so, can the requirement to use a maintainerless package
(update-fonts-dir) be removed from the Debian Policy Manual?  (I would
prefer that option as long as the font could someday leave unstable.)

This is my first Debian package and this detail is a stumbling block.
Thanks for any advice.

I can also write a proposed update to the Policy Manual font section
to cover TrueType fonts if it will be considered, unless someone else
is working on that.


Paul Hardy
unifoundry@...


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[Adam D. Barratt-29]

On Sat, 2008-07-19 at 16:58 -0700, Paul Hardy wrote:
> I have been getting ready to release a font plus sources and auxiliary
> programs for Debian.  The Policy Manual requires using the
> update-fonts-dir script when installing a font.
>
> I was going to post a change to the update-fonts-dir script
[...]
> Unfortunately, the BTS says that the package has no current
> maintainer, and asks that bugs not be filed against it.

http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=contents&keywords=update-fonts-dir says update-fonts-dir is in the xfonts-utils package, and http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=xfonts-utils certainly isn't complaining about a lack of maintainer.

Ah, I see the confusion - you're looking at the BTS page for
"update-fonts-dir". That will indeed tell you there's no maintainer
listed and not to file bugs against it, but it also includes "[t]here is
no record of the update-fonts-dir package".

The reason there's no record of the package (and therefore no maintainer
of record) is that it's not a package - it's a script in the xfont-utils
package.

Regards,

Adam


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[Paul Hardy]

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Adam D. Barratt
<adam@...> wrote:

> On Sat, 2008-07-19 at 16:58 -0700, Paul Hardy wrote:
>> I have been getting ready to release a font plus sources and auxiliary
>> programs for Debian.  The Policy Manual requires using the
>> update-fonts-dir script when installing a font.
>>
>> I was going to post a change to the update-fonts-dir script
> [...]
>> Unfortunately, the BTS says that the package has no current
>> maintainer, and asks that bugs not be filed against it.
>
> http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=contents&keywords=update-fonts-dir says update-fonts-dir is in the xfonts-utils package, and http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=xfonts-utils certainly isn't complaining about a lack of maintainer.
>
> Ah, I see the confusion - you're looking at the BTS page for
> "update-fonts-dir". That will indeed tell you there's no maintainer
> listed and not to file bugs against it, but it also includes "[t]here is
> no record of the update-fonts-dir package".
>
> Regards,
>
> Adam
>

Thanks.  I was traveling today (and was away from home all last week)
and didn't have access to my Debian system.  I didn't know you could
look up a package name that contained a program like that online.  I
was trying to finish this this weekend (probably won't happen now) so
I sent out my email.

Still, there isn't any point in running update-fonts-dir the way it
stands now on any TrueType font (and therefore have a package with a
TrueType font comply with the Policy Manual) because the script never
looks under "/usr/share/fonts/truetype".  If update-fonts-dir is to
remain in the Policy Manual, then either it needs to be updated for
TrueType fonts or the Policy Manual needs to change saying that
update-fonts-dir doesn't apply to TrueType fonts, only to fonts under
"/usr/share/fonts/X11".  Which would make more sense?


Paul Hardy


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[Russ Allbery-2]

"Paul Hardy" <unifoundry@...> writes:

> Still, there isn't any point in running update-fonts-dir the way it
> stands now on any TrueType font (and therefore have a package with a
> TrueType font comply with the Policy Manual) because the script never
> looks under "/usr/share/fonts/truetype".  If update-fonts-dir is to
> remain in the Policy Manual, then either it needs to be updated for
> TrueType fonts or the Policy Manual needs to change saying that
> update-fonts-dir doesn't apply to TrueType fonts, only to fonts under
> "/usr/share/fonts/X11".  Which would make more sense?

The section in the policy manual on X fonts is only for fonts delivered
over the X protocol, and hence doesn't apply to TrueType fonts.  I agree
that this is not horribly clear at the moment, in part because it's stated
in a footnote:

    For the purposes of Debian Policy, a "font for the X Window System" is
    one which is accessed via X protocol requests. Fonts for the Linux
    console, for PostScript renderer, or any other purpose, do not fit
    this definition. Any tool which makes such fonts available to the X
    Window System, however, must abide by this font policy.

This was all written before TrueType fonts were widely used for X and
didn't anticipate them, but in context the intention of this section is to
only apply to the sorts of fonts that you'd list in the FontPath directive
in your xorg.conf.

Policy needs some wording adjustment here to make this more clear.  It's
caused a fair bit of confusion lately.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@...)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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