TW snapshot 20180127 brought Libreoffice 6.0.0.2-2.1, which now “requires” xorg-x11-fonts.
From the changelog:
Wed 24 Jan 2018 12:00:00 GMT
xxxxxx @ suse.com
Now being rather adverse to have a plethora of (to me) unneeded fonts, I was not overly keen on the idea of having that package installed.
So I decided to give it a go without it… and, Libreoffice still works fine at the moment, as far as I can tell…
Maybe it’s needed if you run LO without the KDE (or GNOME) integration?
Just a guess though.
The LibreOffice 6.0 Release Notes <https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/6.0> do not mention anything about Linux needing the “X.Org fonts” package.
They’ve added the Noto, open source Arabic and Hebrew fonts and removed the Open_Sans and PT_Serif fonts.
This LibreOffice Change Request <https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103080>, doesn’t mention (AFAICS) the need for Linux to include the “X.Org fonts” package.
Could it be that, the LibreOffice dependency for the “X.Org fonts” package is a mistake?
[HR][/HR]On this Leap 42.3 KDE Plasma 5 system, the only things which ** need ** the “X.Org fonts” package are:
> rpm --query --whatrequires xorg-x11-fonts
graphviz-gnome-2.38.0-9.3.x86_64
GraphicsMagick-1.3.25-60.1.x86_64
>
Maybe it was needed before already, just the package dependency was missing in openSUSE?
And note that I think it’s probably used/needed by the GUI itself. (the generic one, as the KDE and GNOME integration should use the fonts specified in the corresponding desktop settings)
But as I wrote, that’s just a guess.
Could it be that, the LibreOffice dependency for the “X.Org fonts” package is a mistake?
Feel free to file a bug report.
But the changelog entry suggests that it is probably not a mistake… The mistake might have been that it didn’t require it before.
On this Leap 42.3 KDE Plasma 5 system, the only things which ** need ** the “X.Org fonts” package are:
Those packages required it.
Doesn’t necessarily mean nothing else needs it… (dependencies might be missing in the packages)
Seemed quite a plausible guess… But I’ve just tried LO in it’s native mode with no desktop integration and it still, apparently, all works OK.
http://paste.opensuse.org/view/raw/9aca55a1
I’m beginning to think that may possibly be the case, as I’ve now used it “for real” for almost three hours without any problems. Also quickly looking, the “Start Centre”, Base, Calc, and Draw all appear to work OK .
On this Leap 42.3 KDE Plasma 5 system, the only things which ** need ** the “X.Org fonts” package are:
On TW (20180127) LO is the only application to “require” xorg-x11-fonts…
paul@Orion-15:~$ rpm --query --whatrequires xorg-x11-fonts
libreoffice-6.0.0.2-2.1.x86_64
paul@Orion-15:~$
Well, the person who did that change should know the real answer… And that’s not me. 
(and he probably won’t read this thread here either I suppose)
On TW (20180127) LO is the only application to “require” xorg-x11-fonts…
Sure, but that likely depends on what you have installed.
On my Leap 42.3 system:
$ rpm --query --whatrequires xorg-x11-fonts
xfig-3.2.5c-13.2.x86_64
emacs-x11-24.3-28.1.x86_64
graphviz-gnome-2.38.0-9.3.x86_64
PS, another idea:
You might have some other fonts installed that are used by LibreOffice, but xorg-x11-fonts might be needed as fallback on a plain/minimal installation…
PPS: I found a “discussion” in https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/569245 but no reply yet unfortunately…
https://build.opensuse.org/user/icon/dimstar?size=20 dimstar wrote 1 day ago
Just curious: wasn’t liberation-fonts enough? is xorg-x11-fonts reqlly needed? (Just fighting with this as it pulls in > 50MB on the live media, which I don’t really have space for)
https://build.opensuse.org/user/icon/kah0922?size=20kah0922 wrote about 7 hours ago
Not to mention the fact that it causes some web pages (at least on Firefox) to use the god-awful Helvetica bitmap font, unless you disable the font (via KDE System Settings).
Comparing the “liberation2-fonts” package to the “liberation-fonts” package the differences seem to be:
[HR][/HR]Looking at the changes made with Request 569245, it seems that:
[HR][/HR]Given that, LibreOffice needs a minimum of either a few TrueType or OTF fonts and, earlier last year, stopped supporting Postscript fonts and, never (AFAIK) supported PCF fonts, the need to require the ‘xorg-x11-fonts’ is puzzling:
Thanks for the OBS link… I’ll keep an eye on it to see if there are any further comments.
Interestingly (?) the change log entry says (my bold) “Require xorg-x11-fonts otherwise nothing is shown”, which is clearly, in my case, not correct, as I don’t have xorg-x11-fonts installed. I do however have “xorg-x11-fonts-core”, perhaps that’s what’s really needed… could remove it and see I suppose.
For the moment I’m content to have xorg-x11-fonts locked and to “break” LO…
That’s rather irrelevant here in the discussion about why xorg-x11-fonts is required now though…
Looking at the changes made with Request 569245, it seems that:
- The older Liberation fonts have not been replaced by the newer Liberation-2 fonts;
- I haven’t seen anything in the “diff” that would indicate that, the Liberation fonts should be removed before the Liberation-2 fonts are installed.
Nothing has been “replaced”, no.
But LibreOffice did recommend the liberation2-fonts on Tumbleweed (and Leap 15).
The change now is that LibreOffice rather recommends the liberation(1)-fonts instead as before (and on Leap 42).
The mentioned bug report (that probably contains the reason for this change) is unaccessible to me though (SUSE internal).
The reason for recommending those fonts is that users don’t have to install them manually and start writing documents immediately.
Given that, LibreOffice needs a minimum of either a few TrueType or OTF fonts and, earlier last year, stopped supporting Postscript fonts and, never (AFAIK) supported PCF fonts, the need to require the ‘xorg-x11-fonts’ is puzzling:
- The “X.Org fonts” package contains only “Luxi” TrueType fonts and, a few East Syriac OTF fonts;
- The rest are Postscript and PCF fonts, which LibreOffice doesn’t support.
This is not about fonts to be used in documents (i.e. when you write a letter). I guess nobody would use the xorg fonts for that…
Again, it’s supposedly about fonts used by the GUI, e.g. the application menus and dialogs.
Yes, but I mean you maybe have other fonts installed that can be used, which may not necessarily be the case.
But as I wrote, I don’t know really.
I do however have “xorg-x11-fonts-core”, perhaps that’s what’s really needed… could remove it and see I suppose.
Maybe the one or the other is needed?
The xorg-x11-fonts-core are required by xorg-x11-server itself here on Leap 42.3 at least (and LibreOffice doesn’t require xorg-x11-fonts yet), but that apparently is no longer the case on Tumbleweed AFAICS…
From the xorg-x11-server changelog (on Tumbleweed, that change is not in the Leap 42.3 package):
Sat Nov 5 21:40:57 UTC 2016 - zaitor@opensuse.org
- Exchange xorg-x11-fonts-core Requires for Recommends. The
corefonts and cursors are not strickly required as long as one
have a substitute such as Adwaita installed.
FYI, somebody filed a bug report about this now:
http://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1083213
Indeed… Thanks.
Added a brief comment and link to this thread.
Seems to be “fixed” now.
From https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2018-03/msg00490.html :
==== libreoffice ====
- Require liberation-fonts instead of Recommends wrt bsc#1083213
- Basically we need ANY font, but liberation-fonts are the
Arial/etc. compatible and thus you can view the MS Word
documents- Drop Build/Require on xorg-x11-fonts
Yeah… saw that a day or two ago, nonetheless thanks for the heads-up.
I still need to “break” LO though, as it now “Requires” liberation fonts… personally I don’t think LO should require any font. Recommend, yes; require, no.
But hey, that’s not your problem 