Re: Font package naming convention

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> skribis:

> On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 01:02:44AM +0300, Alex Kost wrote:

[...]

>> I'm against any strict binding to an upstream name.  Why should we stick
>> to a (potentially strange) upstream name if we know better how a package
>> should be called?
>
> This is what we have done so far and it is part of the packaging guidelines.

Yes, and I think we should stick to that for software packages, with the
already-documented exceptions of ‘perl-’ and ‘python-’.

Now, I think a good reason to add an exception for fonts is that it
would make it easier to search for them: a software package can be
searched by keyword quite reasonably (with ‘guix package --search’ &
co.), but this is not the case for a font.  Being able to type ‘guix
package -A ^font’ (say) is convenient.

Furthermore, unlike software packages, what matters here is the actual
name of the font or font collection, not the “system name” or “tarball
name.”

> 1)
> Do we want to have the font format as part of the name?
> Not having it would make things easier for packages containing several
> formats; a user looking only for special types of fonts would then have to
> go through the package descriptions. We could then prepend "font" or "fonts"
> to the package name and drop it from inside (or keep it additionally inside,
> which would be somewhat strange, but would avoid strange names occurring for
> "unifont", for instance).
>
> 2)
> Do we distinguish between packages containing one font (possibly in several
> variants), prepending it with "font-", and packages containing several
> fonts, prepending it with "fonts-", or do we go with a common prefix?
>
> 3)
> If we want to add the font format to the package name, which font formats
> do we want to "support"? We need a complete list.
>
> 4)
> For the sake of argument, assume we decided on ttf and otf in 2).
> Then packages containing only ttf could be prepended with "ttf" or "ttf-font"
> or something like this, likewise for packages containing only otf.
> We could use the "file extension" such as "ttf", or any longer version
> such as "true-type-fonts".

All good points, indeed.

I’m not completely sure we can come up with a strict algorithm for the
naming scheme that we will not want to change two weeks later.  ;-)

Here’s a possible answer to the above questions, informally:

  • Use ‘font-FOUNDRY-FAMILY’ or ‘font-FAMILY’ or
    ‘font-FOUNDRY-COLLECTION’ or ‘font-COLLECTION’ as the name.

    Examples: ‘font-bitstream-vera’, ‘font-liberation’, ‘font-unifont’.

  • Use ‘font-.*-FORMAT’ only when there happens to be separate packages
    for separate formats.  FORMAT would be the format short name, like
    ‘ttf’, ‘otf’, ‘type1’.

WDYT, fellow nitpickers?  :-)

IMO the goal should be to find something convenient for users.
Sometimes, maybe, there will be several valid choices for the package
name, but that’s fine, I think.

Ludo’.