Archive:Fonts/DejavuFeedbackCall

= What is this DejaVu thing? =

Fedora is calling for a round of testing/feedback on the DejaVu font family. You don't need any technical background to provide it. Just read this page.

http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/skins/common/images/dejavu_logo2.png

DejaVu is the most popular FLOSS derivative of the Bitstream Vera font family. DejaVu is currently consolidating the Vera forks initiated after it become clear Vera would not be updated or fixed any time soon (the last Vera release was done April 16, 2003).

The main DejaVu aims are: 1. Quality (fix all the problems of existing Vera glyphs) 2. Coverage (extend Vera beyond its current Latin-9 limits : Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian, Arabic , etc)

DejaVu is already extensively used by Debian, Ubuntu (default font) and Suse (replaced Suse own fonts) to name a few other major Linux distributions.

DejaVu screenshots are available on here  and there

= Why should I care? =

DejaVu is being proposed  as the Fedora Core 6 default font. (see also the fedora-devel discussion )

DejaVu touches a lot of languages. Just look at the [#head-b21e265839926d95ecee4572b0da56a4c53cb03c coverage] of the current version.

''However do not panic if you don't like the look of the font for your langage. Based on the feedback you provide now the fonts will either be fixed or part of them blacklisted. The  Fedora Extras package showcases this kind of blacklisting for Arabic and Persian''

= What can I do? =

Some people feel the font big coverage was attained by sacrificing quality. This was never the project intent. To help put this issue to rest we ask everyone interested in crisp fonts on FOSS Desktops to:

Install DejaVu
If you have the Fedora Extra repositories configured, the following commands will work :
 * with Fedora Core 6 Testx or Fedora Devel
 * with Fedora Core 5
 * with Fedora Core 4

The fonts are also available unpackaged as a direct download.

Test it
Try the DejaVu fonts in your usual apps and report any problem you find on the DejaVu bugzilla

Problems may include:
 * bad rendering in some sizes, apps or when printed
 * ugly, difficult to read or missing glyphs
 * bad glyph or accent spacing

If you just wish to report the font is great the designers would appreciate a mail to the DejaVu mailing list

A good problem report will include the following information:
 * the tested font family (DejaVu Sans, Serif or Sans Mono)
 * your font settings (as displayed in )
 * your screen model, type, size and resolution
 * the resolution reported by
 * a screenshot exhibiting the problem, and (if possible) the font settings the application used

To help evaluate your reports please indicate your cultural background. Remarks from native speakers or professional typesetters obviously weight more than dilettantes commenting on foreign language rendering.

Reports from native speakers of non western langages would be especially appreciated (Arabic, Armenian...)

Lastly if you don't want to bother with subscribing to the dejavu mailing list or create a bugzilla account just send the reports by mail to the Fedora Extras DejaVu maintainer and he'll dispatch them wherever needed.

= Frequently asked questions =

Are the fonts hinted?
The DejaVu fonts are partially hinted. Hinting is a work in progress, old glyphs will tend to be hinted, recently changed glyphs may only be hinted after a few releases. However, Fedora ships fontconfig with the bytecode interpreter off, and autohinting on, so unless you replace the Fedora fontconfig with some other binaries you won't notice the difference.

I don't like antialiased fonts!
DejaVu fonts does not force you to use any particular  antialiasing  level. If you chose to disable antialiasing on your system, installing the fonts won't change your setting.

How can I go back?
If you installed the fonts using yum, the following command will remove them from the system:
 * for Fedora Devel, Fedora Core 6 Testx, Fedora Core 5
 * for Fedora Core 4

If you used the direct download option, just delete the font files.

Note that even after  is uninstalled, fontconfig will still use DejaVu fonts  by default if it finds them on the system. This choice was made to avoid touching fontconfig files more often than strictly necessary. The next fontconfig update will replace the changes by the Fedora default setup.

To reverse this change manually remove the DejaVu -related lines from the following blocks in :

serif [list of serif fonts by priority]

sans-serif [list of sans-serif fonts by priority]

monospace [list of monospace fonts by priority]

If you want to keep the fonts on your system but do not wish them as default uninstall the  package

and edit  as just described

DejaVu is too wide/thin/heavy!
The DejaVu project tries to follow the style defined by Vera's original Bitstream designer, Jim Lyles. There is no plan to turn DejaVu  into the clone of some other widely used font.

DejaVu will feel different at first. Give it some time - after a while you may revisit your opinion of your current fonts.

Technical challenges of complex fonts like DejaVu
DejaVu big coverage and use of advanced OpenType  features is stressing the Fedora font infrastructure. The current problems were best described by Ben Laenen in this message. They are now well-known and being addressed by the various FOSS projects impacted. We ask you not to bring these issues up again during this testing phase.
 * if you wish to help add Localised Forms (locl) support in Pango, please work directly with the Pango project (Gnome 325714 ).
 * if you wish to help improve the fontconfig aliasing logic help push Jay Hobson's patch upstream. (fontconfig #7528 - fontconfig support to exclude glyphs from fonts )
 * so far no one has announced he's working on BASE OpenType support, but the pango project would be very interested in contributions. (Gnome 346419 )

None of the issues are DejaVu specific, they all need fixing regardless of DejaVu  Fedora Core inclusion, and while DejaVu  could use the fixes it's not faring worse than any other complex font (like popular Microsoft fonts) without them now.

This is solely a user-lever æstethics feedback test aimed at:
 * identifying problems the DejaVu team can fix in the next versions of the font,
 * identifying big problems that will require fontconfig-level blacklisting (and while advanced fontconfig aliasing logic would help the dejavu-fonts-block package shows some blacklisting can already be done with the current Fedora Devel fontconfig version)

I can't evaluate my langage based on the linked screenshots!
First, many system settings can influence font rendering, and we'd really like you to test the fonts on your actual system.

That being said, Davide Viti (zinosat at tiscali dot it) will probably appreciate if you can send him better text samples for his next screenshots batch.

What is the list of currently reported problems?
The current list of problem reports is available online.

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= DejaVu current coverage =

Here is the language coverage of the 2.7 version which is currently in Fedora Extras. Note that DejaVu has a short monthly release cycle. The next release will include Hebrew among other enhancements.