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Variable Noto Fonts

Summary

This Change aims to change the priority in Google Noto to make Variable Fonts higher than non-Variable Fonts.


Owner

Current status

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)
  • 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)

Release Notes