From Fedora Project Wiki

A page of the Fonts Special Interest Group

FPC
This proposal was reviewed and approved by FPC on 2009-01-14.
FESCO
FPC's conclusions were ratified by FESCO on 2009-01-16.

Foreword

This proposal is a follow-up and replacement for the naming rules rejected by FPC on 2009-01-06. It is more invasive and will require more changes, but should produce more pleasant font package names.

Renaming of existing packages that fail this new rule will wait for the corresponding policy to be finalised, or for a specific FPC exception.

The change consists of the addition one section to our current font policy that should be referenced in Packaging/NamingGuidelines (alternatively it could be transcluded in both pages).


What is a font family?
  • A font family corresponds to one entry in GUI font lists. For example, DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Serif and DejaVu Sans Mono are three different font families.
  • A font family is subdivided in faces or styles. DejaVu Sans Normal, DejaVu Sans Bold, DejaVu Sans Condensed Italic are three faces of the DejaVu Sans font family.
  • A font-metadata aware tool such as gnome-font-viewer[1] or fontforge[2] can be used to check the font family name and the font face/style declared by a font file.

Naming

Fedora font packages are named [foundryname-]projectname[-fontfamilyname]-fonts, in lowercase.

Clarifications

  1. For Fedora purposes a “foundry” is an entity that publishes a set of fonts with consistent font QA rules. Thus a generic hosting service such as Sourceforge is not a foundry, but the Open Font Library is.
  2. It is good practice to contract foundryname- in a short prefix.
  3. The foundryname- prefix can optionally be skipped:
    • for entities that never released more than one font family, or
    • when the font project and the publishing entity are one and the same.
  4. If projectname or foundryname are repeated in fontfamilyname, they can be dropped from fontfamilyname.
  5. When foundryname, projectname or fontfamilyname contain the font or fonts affix, this affix should be dropped from them[3].
  6. -fontfamilyname should not be included in the srpm name of a package that includes several different font families.
  7. If any element of the naming contains spaces, they should be replaced by “-”.
  8. The use of the -fonts suffix is not dependant on the actual number of font files in the package.

When in doubt, ask the mailing list for clarification.

Examples

Font package naming examples
Source package (src.rpm) Binary (sub)package Description
Fonts Other Fonts Other
apanov-heuristica-fonts apanov-heuristica-fonts “Heuristica” font family published by Andrey Panov, “apanov”.
sil-abyssinica-fonts sil-abyssinica-fonts “Abyssinica SIL” font family published by the “SIL” foundry.
oflb-brett-fonts oflb-brett-fonts “BrettFont” font family published on the “Open Font Library”, “oflb” foundry.
dejavu-fonts
  • dejavu-sans-fonts
  • dejavu-sans-mono-fonts
  • dejavu-serif-fonts
The three “DejaVu” font families self-published by the “DejaVu” project.
dejavu-fonts-common Utility subpackage with no font files inside.
google-droid-fonts
  • google-droid-sans-fonts
  • google-droid-sans-mono-fonts
  • google-droid-serif-fonts
The three “Droid” font families published by “Google”, as part of its “Droid” release.
google-droid-fonts-common Utility subpackage with no font files inside.
un-core-fonts
  • un-core-pilgi-fonts
  • un-core-dinaru-fonts
  • un-core-batang-fonts…
“UN Core” fonts published by the “UN” project.
un-core-fonts-common Utility subpackage with no font files inside.
openoffice.org openoffice.org-opensymbol-fonts The “OpenSymbol” font family published as part of “openoffice.org”.
  • openoffice.org-writer
  • openoffice.org-calc…
ctan-cm-lgc-fonts
  • ctan-cm-lgc-sans-fonts
  • ctan-cm-lgc-roman-fonts
  • ctan-cm-lgc-typewriter-fonts…
“CM LGC” font families published by the “CTAN” foundry.
ctan-cm-lgc-fonts-common Utility subpackage with no font files inside.
ctan-cm-lgc-tex

TEX overlay for ctan-cm-lgc fonts (cooked up example, this page is not a TEX naming guideline)

Notes:

  1. Simple, but sadly not available in each and every Fedora release.
  2. Type <CTRL> + <SHIFT> + <F> to open the font metadata window in fontforge.
  3. To avoid foofont-fonts packages.


Fonts in Fedora
The Fonts SIG takes loving care of Fedora fonts. Please join this special interest group if you are interested in creating, improving, packaging, or just suggesting a font. Any help will be appreciated.