Revision as of 15:48, 25 July 2008

The Fonts SIG could have been named the Text or Typography SIG. While fonts are a large part of what we do, our actual scope is larger.

About us

The Fonts Special Interest Group is an informal group of Fedora Linux contributors. It is dedicated to improving fonts availability and text rendering/layouting in the distribution and its other Linux derivatives.

Join us and help:

Fonts SIG activities

Activity	OS Developer	Translator	Content Writer	Designer	People Person
find the best fonts to include, to please artists, identify font creation tools needing packaging, create and improve Fedora fonts,
find the best fonts to include, for internationalization reasons, document the preferred fonts for your locale, improve the way a font supports your script by identifying problems and proposing ameliorations,
package new fonts and font tools, review font packages before Fedora inclusion, fix font or text problems in applications and libraries,
propose good Fedora fonts defaults,
identify font or text problems in applications and libraries, improve font package descriptions and summaries to help users choose the right fonts for their needs,
convince foundries to release fonts under a free/libre Fedora-friendly license, recruit possible free/libre font authors, recruit new SIG members, get font or text problems fixed, improve the SIG visibility by getting it linked and quoted everywhere,
document font creation tasks, document free/libre font release best practices, document free/libre font packaging, clarify, complete and improve our wiki, identify interesting third-party material, and link it here, convert wiki information to other document formats.

Any font or text-related activity can be tackled, as long as the result is free/libre and compatible with the Fedora objectives.

The current SIG task list is published here.

Get involved

Follow the steps listed on this page, and you'll be fine.

Communication

E-mail

Fonts SIG mailing lists

Mailing list name	Intended use	Web archives
		Source	Gmane	MarkMail	The mail archive
fonts	Main SIG coordination channel, for human discussions. Post your questions and proposals there.	Archives	Archives	Archives	Archives
fonts-bugs	Automated tracking of font and text issues. Consult it to follow new problem reports and fixes, CC it in issue trackers. Read only archiving list: do not post messages there, use the other list you can follow this archive via digests, internet archives, etc	Archives	Archives	Archives	Archives

IRC

We do not have a dedicated IRC channel right now; the general low-traffic ##fonts channel on irc.freenode.net should be used instead. It is shared by several free/open font groups and is distribution-agnostic.

Planet

Nicolas Spalinger of SIL, Debian and Ubuntu fonts fame has set up planet open fonts , with a VCS satellite , to help people in the free/libre-open fonts community exchange information.