Variable Noto Fonts
Summary
This Change aims to change the priority in Google Noto to make Variable Fonts higher than non-Variable Fonts.
Owner
- Name: Akira TAGOH
- Email: tagoh@redhat.com
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 31
- Last updated: 2019-08-12
- Tracker bug: #1739976
- Release notes tracker: #374
Detailed Description
The font selection to match better fonts mostly depends on the order of the configuration files for fontconfig which is available at /etc/fonts/conf.d as long as it is written along the templates in our guidelines. so if we want to change that behavior for certain languages, we usually change the priority of it.
This proposal is to give the variable fonts version of Google Noto families higher priority than non-variable fonts in Google Noto families, to enable the variable fonts in Google Noto.
Benefit to Fedora
The variable fonts of Google Noto families supports some axes for variations into one OpenType font file. no need to have multiple files per variations. this saves disk spaces and give us more better experience.
We have already enabled Google Noto as default fonts for Sinhala which affects by this change. it may be good to have the comparison table how it saves.
Language | non-VF | VF |
---|---|---|
Sinhala | 10.94MiB | 1.02MiB |
There are also the variable fonts available for other languages too but not default fonts for them. this will gives similar benefits for them as well if one install them instead of non-VF version of Noto:
- sans-serif
- Latin
- Arabic
- Armenian
- Bengali
- Canadian Aboriginal
- Cham
- Cherokee
- Devanagari
- Ethiopic
- Georgian
- Hebrew
- Kannada
- khmer
- Lao
- Malayalam
- Myanmar
- Tamil
- Thaana
- Thai
- serif
- Latin
- Armenian
- Ethiopic
- Georgian
- Gujarati
- Gurmukhi
- Hebrew
- Kannada
- Khmer
- Lao
- Myanmar
- Tamil
- Thai
- Tibetan
- monospace
- Latin
Scope
- Proposal owners:
- Update google-noto-fonts package to change the priority of fontconfig configuration files
- Update langpacks to replace non-VF to VF version of packages
- Update comps.xml to replace non-VF to VF version of packages
- Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Release engineering: #Releng issue number (a check of an impact with Release Engineering is needed)
- Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
Upgrade/compatibility impact
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
How To Test
To check if you use the variable fonts:
$ fc-match -f '%{file}' sans-serif:lang=si /usr/share/fonts/google-noto-vf/NotoSansSinhala-VF.ttf
The filename should be obvious for the variable fonts.
User Experience
Users can see more variations of fonts if applications supports.
Dependencies
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Contingency Plan
- Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) We can simply revert the relevant changes to what we had before this change
- Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Blocks release? No
Documentation
N/A (not a System Wide Change)