Reduce default font selection by using Noto instead

[rokejulianlockhart]

Let selection of default fonts be based on Noto

@https://discourse.ubuntu.com/u/gunnarhj

Hi all,

I would like to make an overhaul of the selection of fonts we ship by default in the Ubuntu desktop. In short I would like to:

1. Install the fonts-noto-core package by defaultThat package includes sans-serif and serif fonts covering latin as well as a large number of non-latin scripts.
2. Keep installing the fonts-noto-cjk package by defaultTo cover Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
3. Drop quite a few font packages for non-latin scripts from the seedSimply because those scripts would be covered by fonts-noto-core, which typically offers fonts of better quality than the non-latin fonts from various sources we currently include by default.
4. Keep DejaVu Sans Mono as the default monospace font for most scripts for nowThe quality of the DejaVu monospace fonts seems to be generally good. No urgent need to change it for monospace.

(Please note that I’m not suggesting that we would replace the Ubuntu font in the desktop environment. I’m talking about the default font picked by fontconfig in other contexts, not least web browsing.)

What would the point with this be?

Currently the DejaVu fonts are default for most scripts. Glyphs for a large number of scripts are bundled into the same DejaVu font file. Example:

$ fc-query /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf | grep -E '\blang' | sed 's/[|]/ /g'
lang: aa ab af ar ast av ay az-az az-ir ba bm be bg bi bin br bs bua ca ce ch chm co cs cu cv cy da de el en eo es et eu fa fi fj fo fr ff fur fy ga gd gl gn gv ha haw he ho hr hu hy ia ig id ie ik io is it iu ka kaa ki kk kl ku-am ku-ir kum kv kw ky la lb lez ln lo lt lv mg mh mi mk mo mt nb nds nl nn no nr nso ny oc om os pl pt rm ro ru sah sco se sel sh shs sk sl sm sma smj smn sms so sq sr ss st sv sw tg tk tl tn to tr ts tt tw tyv ug uk uz ve vi vo vot wa wen wo xh yap yi yo zu ak an ber-dz ber-ma crh csb ee fat fil hsb ht hz jv kab kj kr ku-iq ku-tr kwm lg li mn-mn ms na ng nv ota pap-an pap-aw qu quz rn rw sc sd sg sn su ty za(s)

While you can argue that this is convenient, it makes it cumbersome to replace the default font for a particular script with some better default font. /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/56-language-selector-ar.conf is a convoluted way to do that for Arabic, but that works only under an Arabic locale. And many Arabic speaking users prefer to use English as display language.

Changing the default font for sans-serif and serif to Noto for most scripts would improve the situation in two ways:

1. Typically it would improve the font quality for non-latin scripts. As regards latin I think the quality of the Noto font is well as good as DejaVu.
2. To the extent we would want to provide non-Noto default fonts for a few scripts, it would be easy to change the font configuration accordingly, and we wouldn’t need to restrict it to certain locales.

It’s worth mentioning that e.g. Fedora and some of our own flavors already use Noto fonts by default. Debian does so too if you install e.g. the GNOME desktop on Debian, since fonts-noto-core is pulled in that case and fontconfig upstream prefers Noto nowadays.

User complaints about too many fonts

There is a discourse topic where some users complain about the large number of fonts currently installed by default. Would this change make those users happy? I’d say ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

I can understand that users who create advanced documents and often need to switch between only a few fonts don’t like the idea with fonts covering a lot of scripts around the world. Apparently the tools for selecting fonts typically show the whole list of installed fonts. So would the proposed change reduce the total number of fonts installed by default? Probably not. I think there would be more of them.

But the good news is that the proposed change would make it much easier for such users to uninstall one or two font packages:

sudo apt purge fonts-noto-core

(I’m assuming that the ubuntu-desktop package would only recommend fonts-noto-core, not depend on it.)

That would leave a significantly smaller number of fonts, where DejaVu would return as the default font for most scripts, and make life easier for advanced content creators.

So how to go about this?

I’m seeking a green light for starting the changes described above in mantic.

As regards the font configuration, the snaps do (or will soon do) that separately, and do not parse the system host’s /etc/fonts/conf.d. So we would need to start with the system, and once there is a decent set of fonts including related font configuration, we would need to copy that into the snaps later.

Looking forward to your response on the proposed changes.

I agree. I tend to always replace the default fonts with Noto anyway.

[hcvv]

It is complete unclear to me what your question/problem is.

Please either explain, or this will be moved to Chat.

[rokejulianlockhart]

@hcvv

It is complete unclear to me what your question/problem is.

@hcvv, did you read the post? I’ll summarise:

I think that instead of the myriad default fonts that come with OpenSUSE by default being installed, Noto and all of its variants should be instead. It would mean that a user, by default, could view every symbol in Unicode in a consistent manner, without ever having to care about font management.

@hcvv

Please either explain, or this will be moved to Chat.

Dunno what that means.

[myswtest]

@rokejulianlockhart

@hcvv

Please either explain, or this will be moved to Chat.

Dunno what that means.

Don’t understand “what”?
“Chat”??
If yes, it’s a “open discussion sub-forum” in here. Kinda like sitting around in your living room with other folks, just chatting about anything, like “what ifs”.

Concerning your post - there is no “technical issue” (to solve) related to “the myriad default fonts” that are available. It’s a nice-to-have.

[hcvv]

@rokejulianlockhart

did you read the post?

I skipped the quoting from other distributions to get to your real technical question/problem. I think there isn’t one. I think that you want a discussion about fonts and what should be in a default installation and the like.

I move this to Open Chat.

[rokejulianlockhart]

@myswtest

Don’t understand “what”?
“Chat”??
If yes, it’s a “open discussion sub-forum” in here. Kinda like sitting around in your living room with other folks, just chatting about anything, like “what ifs”.

Yeah. All forum posts are discussions. It’s not like this site is an issue tracker.

@hcvv

I skipped the quoting from other distributions to get to your real technical question/problem.

The quote was the only content of the post. That means you skipped the entire post… That doesn’t make any sense. Also, the quote, being the only content of the post, was my suggestion. At least my summary specified it for you, I suppose.

@myswtest

Concerning your post - there is no “technical issue” (to solve) related to “the myriad default fonts” that are available. It’s a nice-to-have.

I don’t know why we’re discussing whether this should be designated as a “technical issue”. I never designated it as such.

---

It doesn’t matter though. You seem to all be missing the point. I don’t care where the post is, that’s an issue of moderation which is decided upon, apparently, @hcvv’s discretion. I also don’t care whether it’s considered technical or philosopical. I just agree with the quoted OP that, in my case, OpenSUSE, doesn’t need the font selection that it comes with, and that the default Noto font selection should be increased, per the quote!

[hui]

Strange. On an untinkered Tumbleweed installation, Noto Sans is already the default.

If Ubuntu users are overwhelmed with a few installed fonts…well, i didn’t see any openSUSE user complain about such thing…

[rokejulianlockhart]

However, it is indeed missing some of its companion fonts, right? I also think, as aforestated, that the other scripts’ fonts should come preinstalled too, and that on a stock system, there would thus be no need for many currently installed-by-default fonts.

[cakeisamadeupdrug]

The only issue I have with fonts is that I can’t write in Discord in Japanese by default, but I also think this is a bit of a niche usecase for people whose language is otherwise set to UK English, and I can just install the relevant fonts myself.

On a previous build I did install all of the fonts, mainly to see what was actually available; having a thousand upgrades of just fonts was hilarious. Needless to say I don’t generally do that.

[john_hudson]

Linux is supposed to be about choice; by all means use the Noto fonts if you find them attractive but font families are intended for different situations. They don’t meet my needs as a typesetter.