[Pkg-fonts-devel] Creating independent packages for OpenType math fonts?

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Frédéric,

thanks for your work, here on @stix2
> independent package for Latin Modern has recently been discussed on the
> webkit-dev mailing list [2].  Of course, other applications (say,
> LibreOffice) could in theory use them to render mathematical expressions...

Then why has nobody contacted me or debian-tex-maint? I can prepare
separate font*math packages if necessary.

> Hence it would make sense to have Debian packages independent from the
> TeX packages. That's the case for two of these font families (Asana and

TeX also uses these fonts, so it cannot completely independent.
(but see below)

> 1) Some of them (Latin Modern, TeX Gyre Bonum, TeX Gyre Pagella, TeX
> Gyre Schola, TeX Gyre Termes) have a separate packages (fonts-lmodern
> and fonts-texgyre) but for some reason they still depend on tex-common.

You have realized that these packages ship files in	
	/usr/share/texmf
?

THe dependency on tex-common was necessary to update the file name 
database of kpathsea (tex) ls-R after installation.

This has changed with tex-common 6.0 which moves the updates to
triggers.

Thus the next uploads will drop the dependency.

> 2) Others (Libertinus, XITS) are included inside the texlive-fonts-extra
> package and so you can not install them without also installing various
> TeX stuff.

many of the fonts in texlive-fonts-extra are already separated out.
Fonts that do not agree or are too old on Debian are kept in TeX Live.
Currently these are:
fonts-cabin
fonts-comfortaa
fonts-crosextra-caladea
fonts-crosextra-carlito
fonts-dejavu-core
fonts-dejavu-extra
fonts-ebgaramond
fonts-ebgaramond-extra
fonts-font-awesome
fonts-freefont-otf
fonts-freefont-ttf
fonts-gfs-artemisia
fonts-gfs-baskerville
fonts-gfs-complutum
fonts-gfs-didot
fonts-gfs-neohellenic
fonts-gfs-olga
fonts-gfs-porson
fonts-gfs-solomos
fonts-hosny-amiri
fonts-ipaexfont-gothic
fonts-ipaexfont-mincho
fonts-ipafont-gothic
fonts-ipafont-mincho
fonts-junicode
fonts-lato
fonts-linuxlibertine
fonts-lobstertwo
fonts-oflb-asana-math
fonts-roboto-hinted
fonts-sil-gentium
fonts-sil-gentium-basic
fonts-sil-gentiumplus
fonts-stix
ttf-adf-accanthis
ttf-adf-gillius
ttf-adf-universalis
ttf-marvosym

Normally when I upload new packages I also check whether new fonts
have been packaged for Debian that can be used instead of the TL
internal fonts.

But I will *not* package these fonts myself.

> So I wonder whether there is any plan to package these fonts
> independently from TeX? Do any TeX/font maintainers have something
> against this idea?

>From my side nothing against it. I think it makes a *LOT* of sense 
to package the xits fonts separately. For the xits fonts I could
agree to do this, but not for other fonts.


Furthermore, I wanted to ask you one thing concerning the tex-gyre and
lmodern fonts: Is there the wish for a separate 
	fonts-lmodern-math
	fonts-texgyre-math
package? Or is removing the dependency on tex-common (which is
anymway minimal!) enough?

All the best

Norbert

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PREINING, Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0  ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
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