[Pkg-fonts-devel] New release: GNU FreeFont

[Steve White]

Davide,

The document in the link you gave is about "programs", and says "must
include source code".
But you do not do this for *all* files in your distribution.

Do you insist on source code for .png and .jpeg files?  I don't think so.

I contend that .ttf's are like picture files in this regard: they
*are* the description of their contents.

This is in contrast to program code, which contains much more
information than a compiled binary.

We include program code because without it, we can't easily reproduce
(or alter) the results.
But this rationale fails in the case of picture files and .ttf files.

So I still think you should not bother with this step in the case of
TrueType fonts.  It is just an impediment.

Cheers!

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 10:46 PM, Davide Viti <zinosat at tiscali.it> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 09:34:38PM +0200, Steve White wrote:
>  >
>  > There is a big difference in nature between an executable machine
>  > binary and a ttf file.
>  >
>  > A machine binary may be meant to do a complex set of tasks, but a
>  > human's only hope of really understanding what it does, or changing
>  > what it does, is by looking at the human-written source code it was
>  > made from.  Compliling program source code is a loss of information.
>  >
>  > In contrast a TrueType file is a description of how to draw a set of
>  > characters.  It isn't textual but it represents all of its
>  > information, and its format is public, and it can be edited by several
>  > means.  And it is cross-platform.
>  >
>  > Like jpeg, png, etc.
>  >
>  > You don't insist on building all your jpegs and png files from source
>  > (I think).  Why do you insist on building ttf files?
>
>  I guess most of the concepts behind Debian are wery well expressed on
>  various docs and I'd start from the DFSG:
>
>  http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html#guidelines
>
>  regards,
>  Davide
>