Comment 21 for bug 93155

Dear all,

The problem of not being able to use DejaVu condensed fonts in KDE (or other similar fonts for that matter) simply is an absolute showstopper for me to switch over to Kubuntu. And I really, really would like to.....

As for the fact that the preferred (sub)family "patch" was made in fontconfig >= 2.4.2 in a non-configurable manner, I find this unbelievable for a package as fundamental as fontconfig. Having fontconfig evolve towards a new approach is great, but given the fact that important environments in which it is used, like KDE and Qt, are not ready for it, should have resulted in a simple configuration option for switching the "patch" on or off, at least until such time the great majority of packages support the new approach.

From what Ben Laenen wrote above and in his explanation at <http://osdir.com/ml/linux.debian.devel.fonts/2007-02/msg00007.html>, it looks like there are three solutions. Unfortunately, none of these solutions are accessible to users like me. I tried to find a version of fontconfig <= 2.4.1 for Kubuntu 8.04, but could not find one. As for the option of "fixing" each font that suffers from the problem, this is not evident for most users, and moreover, not an option for older fonts which are no longer maintained and which are either not free or not open.

Having said this all, I see only three solutions that would make the problem disappear for (potential) Kubuntu users like me:

(a) Knowing that it is not realistic to expect all packages that use (the results of) fontconfig to be fixed, release a Kubuntu-specific version of fontconfig in which the preferred (sub)family "patch" can be turned on or off by means of a configuration option. It would of course be even better to ask the maintainers of fontconfig to incorporate this in a future version, but that would require Kubuntu to switch to such updated version of fontconfig (thereby noting that Kubuntu 8.04.1 does not currently use the latest stable version of fontconfig, version 2.6.0, but uses version 2.5.0 instead).

(b) Release a Kubuntu-specific package from which the preferred (sub)family "patch" is removed (meaning that you could then choose to install either the current version or such alternative version. This solution would require two packages to be maintained though.

(c) Release the latest non-"patched" version of fontconfig, version 2.4.1, for at least Kubuntu 8.04.1, but preferably for all other maintained versions of Kubuntu.

Would any of these solutions be possible in the near future?

    Best regards,

    Boudewijn Overgaauw