Intro

One of the main advantages of the graphical version of the installer is that it can support languages that use combining characters. We are currently using only TTF fonts.

[http://fontconfig.org/wiki/ Fontconfig] is used for font management. See [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354044 #354044]

The following issues are open with respect to fonts:

News

2007-12-10 ttf-dejavu 2.22 uploaded in unstable

2007-10-30 ttf-dejavu 2.21 uploaded in unstable

2007-09-22 ttf-dejavu 2.20 uploaded in unstable

2007-08-06 ttf-dejavu 2.19 uploaded in unstable

2007-08-04 g-i now uses ttf-dejavu to render Georgian text

2007-07-04 ttf-dejavu 2.18 uploaded in unstable

2007-05-14 ttf-dejavu 2.17 uploaded in unstable

2007.04.14 ttf-dejavu 2.16 uploaded in unstable

2007.03.05 ttf-dejavu 2.15 reached testing and will be used for Etch

Requirements for packaging fonts

Davide Viti created [http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/d-i/trunk/scripts/g-i/strip_glyphs.pe?op=file&rev=0&sc=0 a fontforge script] that will allow stripping unnecessary glyphs or glyph ranges from the fonts. If needed, one can [http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/d-i/trunk/scripts/g-i/README.strip_glyphs?op=file&rev=0&sc=0 read the usage hints].

Information on how to play around with fonts is included in ["DebianInstallerGUIBuild"].


Fonts configuration for the G-I

Infos for language codes were fetched from:

Font packages currently used:

Color codes below:

Latin-1

Base characters (Latin) are taken from ttf-dejavu (existing udeb).

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

br

Breton

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

ca

Catalan

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

ca@valencia

Valencian-Catalan

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

da

Danish

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

de

German

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

en

English

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

es

Spanish

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

eu

Basque

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

fi

Finnish

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

fr

French

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

ga

Irish

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

gl

Galician

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

id

Indonesian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

is

Icelandic

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

it

Italian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

ms

Malay

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

Language is not supported yet but uses only ASCII characters

nb

Norwegian Bokmal

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

nl

Dutch

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

nn

Norwegian Nynorsk

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

pt

Portuguese

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

pt_BR

Portuguese (Brazil)

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

sq

Albanian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

sv

Swedish

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

tl

Tagalog

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

xh

Xhosa

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

Latin-other

These are also covered by ttf-dejavu.

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

ast

Asturian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

bs

Bosnian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

cs

Czech

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

cy

Welsh

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

eo

Esperanto

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

et

Estonian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

hu

Hungarian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

ku

Kurdish

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

lv

Latvian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

lt

Lithuanian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

mg

Malagasy

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

pl

Polish

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

ro

Romanian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

hr

Croatian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

se

Sami

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

sk

Slovak

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

sl

Slovenian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

tr

Turkish

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

ok

vi

Vietnamese

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont;[http://www.vn.net/staticpages/index.php/VietUniFont-HanNomSet ?HanNomSet],[http://www.vn.net/staticpages/index.php/VietUniFont-TriChlorSet ?TriChlorSet]

The licenses for [http://www.vn.net/staticpages/index.php/VietUniFont-HanNomSet ?HanNomSet] have not been studied. [http://www.vn.net/staticpages/index.php/VietUniFont-TriChlorSet ?TriChlorSet] is "all rights reserved".

wo

Wolof

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

Display is correct with ttf-freefont, even the "ŋ" characters; dejavu state is unknown

Non-Latin scripts

Armenian script

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

hy

Armenian

ttf-dejavu

Language not yet in the installer

Georgian script

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

ka

Georgian

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont, ttf-bpg-georgian-fonts

Udeb OK

Greek script

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

el

Greek

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

With ttf-freefont, Greek is a little blurred but ok: see [http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2006/02/msg00662.html this] thread

Hebrew script

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

he

Hebrew

ttf-dejavu

ttf-freefont

OK for translator

Indic family scripts

Lang Code

Language Name

Script

Current Font pkg

Other Font pkg

Status / Observations

bn

Bengali

Bengali

ttf-freefont

ttf-bengali-fonts

?MuktiNarrow in ttf-bengali-fonts recommended by translators (udeb requested with [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=375475 #375475])

gu

Gujarati

Gujarati

ttf-freefont

ttf-gujarati-fonts

hi

Hindi

Devanagari

ttf-freefont

ttf-devanagari-fonts

Gargi_1.7.ttf in ttf-devanagari-fonts also possible.

kn

Kannada

Kannada

ttf-freefont

ttf-kannada-fonts

Uses Kannada script. Kadige-* in ttf-kannada-fonts suggested by indlinux contributors. As of version 20080912 of Freefont, Kannada glyphs have been removed upstream

ml

Malayalam

Malayalam

ttf-malayalam-fonts

Rachana_w01.otf is used.

mr

Marathi

Devanagari

ttf-freefont

ttf-devanagari-fonts

Gargi_1.7.ttf in ttf-devanagari-fonts also possible

ne

Nepali

Devanagari

ttf-freefont

ttf-devanagari-fonts

Gargi_1.7.ttf in ttf-devanagari-fonts recommended by Paras pradhan

pa

Punjabi

Gurmukhi

ttf-freefont

ttf-punjabi-fonts

Saab.ttf of lohit_pa.ttf from ttf-punjabi-fonts also possible (soumyadip: well I was reading somewhere that AnmolUni was better) - this font should be (apparently) in ttf-punjabi-fonts, but is not currently (1:0.4.7)

sa

Sanskrit

Devanagari

ttf-freefont

ttf-devanagari-fonts

Language not yet in the installer

si

Sinhala

Sinhala

ttf-sinhala-lklug

Language not yet in the installer - udeb to create

ta

Tamil

Tamil

ttf-tamil-fonts

TSCu_Paranar in ttf-tamil-fonts

te

Telugu

Telugu

ttf-telugu-fonts

Pothana2000 suggested by translator. Language not yet in the installer. udeb to build when needed

ks

Kashmiri

Devanagari

ttf-freefont

ttf-devanagari-fonts

Gargi_1.7.ttf in ttf-devanagari-fonts also possible. Doubts about complete support in Freefont. It seems that Kashmiri has special glyphs wrt other Devanagari-based languages. See [ http://pravins.fedorapeople.org/Draft/kashmiri_draft.html that link] for more details

Resources: #indlinux IRC channel on irc.freenode.net and eventually < debian-in-workers@lists.alioth.debian.org >

There was [http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/12/msg00338.html a report] stating that Bengali does not look right. [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343446 #343446] tries to analyze the problem.

Bengali: Mukti Narrow looks great, but there is some more stripping to be done (apparently) because this font is silently overridden by freefont (probably). (by silent I mean that "fc-list :lang:bn" does not list nothing other than Mukti, but the installer uses something else, anyway). Update: #343446 confirms that ?MuktiNarrow should be used. Although freefont has support for Bengali, it seems that there are still some problems.

Ethiopic script

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

am

Amharic

ttf-sil-abyssinica

Abyssinica_SIL to be used. udeb requested in 447970. Package with udeb in the archive.

Tibetan family scripts

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Font pkg

Status / Observations

dz

Dzongkha

ttf-tmuni

ttf-dzongkha

udeb OK

South-East Asian scripts

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Font pkg

Status / Observations

km

Khmer

ttf-khmeros

KhmerOSsys.ttf udeb OK

lo

Lao

ttf-dejavu

ttf-lao

Font named Phetsarath (ttf-lao)

th

Thai

ttf-thai-tlwg-udeb

none

Font named Loma. udeb OK

Arabic scripts

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

ar

Arabic

ttf-farsiweb

ttf-arabeyes

Font named Nazli ae_AlMohanad from ttf-arabeyes also possible

fa

Persian

ttf-farsiweb

Font named Nazli

ur

Urdu

ttf-nafees

ttf-paktype

Font named ?NafeesWeb. Language not yet in the installer

Resources: #arabeyes IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

Chinese/Japanese/Korean scripts

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

ja

Japanese

ttf-cjk-compact-udeb

Sazanami-Gothic recommended. A stripped ttf is about 160KB. Still there is a [http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2006/02/msg00936.html issue] with the kana and kanji glyphs which are not well mixed for Japanese. Kenshi Muto confirmed personally that the issue is present. No solution for this problem, yet.

ko

Korean

ttf-cjk-compact-udeb

Korean fonts are taken from UnDotum confirmed OK by translator

zh_CN

Chinese (Simplified)

ttf-cjk-compact-udeb

zh_TW

Chinese (Traditional)

ttf-cjk-compact-udeb

For Chinese and Japanese [http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/12/msg00150.html we currently use the fonts prepared by Kenshi Muto] (ttf-compact-fonts). For an overview, see [http://people.debian.org/~kmuto/d-i/cjk/cjk.html this page].

We should make sure that none of the fonts below provides glyphs for other scripts than the ones which they were introduced (currently there are latin glyphs provided by them which take up space and harm us a lot for latin scripts).

Chinese and Japanese have an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification unification problem]. Unicode defines same codepoint against different glyphs between Japanese/Chinese(/Korean, but the Korean translation does not use any glyphs from this Unified Ideographs region so Korean is free from this issue). Furthermore Chinese font face and Japanese font face are different (do you think Helvetica and NewCentury are same? :-P ). So they don't like to use them together.

For Korean we now use [http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/12/msg00150.html ttf-compact-fonts], which has stripped UnDotum.ttf from ttf-unfonts (maintained by Changwoo Ryu < cwryu@debian.org >)

We previous included complete ttfs, but these took a lot of space:

We did have report stating that the UnDotum looked right: http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/11/msg01409.html

Cyrillic scripts

Lang Code

Language Name

Current Font pkg

Other Fonts pkg

Status / Observations

be

Belarusian

ttf-dejavu

bg

Bulgarian

ttf-dejavu

kk

Kazakh

ttf-dejavu

mk

Macedonian

ttf-dejavu

ru

Russian

ttf-dejavu

sr

Serbian

ttf-dejavu

uk

Ukrainian

ttf-dejavu

Creating screenshots

As a prerequisite your machine must have been started with support for framebuffer

You can take a screenshoot for Italian language:

$ ./gtk_font_tester it.txt  800 600
$  mv /var/log/test_0.png /var/log/it.png

or if you want to take a screenshot for all supported languages:

$ take_shots.sh

It's now possible to leave the chroot (CTRL-d) and see the pictures inside tree/var/log