On Sat, Oct 05, 2019 at 09:44:25PM +0200, Stephen Kitt wrote: > Policy section 11.8.5, point 1 says > > > If one or more of the fonts so packaged are necessary for proper > > operation of the package with which they are associated the font > > package may be Recommended; if the fonts merely provide an > > enhancement, a Suggests relationship may be used. Packages must not > > Depend on font packages. > > The associated footnote explains that > > > This is because the X server may retrieve fonts from the local file > > system or over the network from an X font server; the Debian package > > system is empowered to deal only with the local file system. > > While this is still technically true, it seems rather irrelevant > nowadays: most GUI programs directly render fonts obtained locally, > and even for “traditional” X fonts, the vast majority of systems will > obtain the fonts locally. Debian hasn’t had xfs for 5.5 years > (<https://bugs.debian.org/bug=733958>); there is another font server > available, xfstt, but that only handles TrueType fonts. > > It’s common for packages to strongly depend on non-X fonts they need; > see for example the reverse dependencies of fonts-dejavu. While > lintian objects to X font depencencies > (<https://lintian.debian.org/tags/package-depends-on-an-x-font-package.html>), > it doesn’t have anything to say about non-X fonts (rightly so). > > Wouldn’t it make sense to relax the constraints on X font > dependencies? > I don't think this change is good as-is. The "don't depend on X font packages" is still very much relevant, for applications that use the "traditional" X font system, where the X server loads the fonts. The X server can still be on a different machine from the client.
This was never meant to apply to clients that use things like Xft to load and render fonts client-side. But I would think these mostly use truetype fonts not the old bitmap fonts. So while this section could absolutely use an update, "don't depend on xfonts-*" is still a good recommendation IMO. Cheers, Julien
