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Revision as of 22:35, 21 June 2008 by Nim (talk | contribs)

Fedora Fonts

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.


Activities

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
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  • package new fonts and font tools,
  • review font packages before Fedora inclusion,
  • fix font or text problems in applications and libraries,
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  • propose good Fedora fonts defaults,
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  • 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,
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  • 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,
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  • 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.
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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.

How to join

The Fonts SIG adheres to the same standards as the rest of the Fedora Project, which means there is some amount of formal process. Don't let this put you off, however. Follow the steps listed on this page, and you'll be fine.

Communication

Mailing lists

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 Feed-icon-14x14.png 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 Feed-icon-14x14.png 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 all the FLOSS font groups and is distribution-agnostic.

External references

  • The freedesktop.org text layout working group regularly publishes materials on present and future state of text rendering on FLOSS desktops. They're all a must-read.
  • Ed Trager maintains the very complete unifont web site.
  • The Open Font Library is an effort to host open fonts, though all may not be free enough for Fedora.
  • Other distributions have fonts packaging projects, notably Debian and Ubuntu.