ImageMagick Font Issues

[Richard Laager]

Binary package hint: libmagick9

Regarding one of our web servers, a co-worker of mine filed an internal
bug with this text:

> ImageMagick fonts don't get properly configured -- this seems like it
> may be a package bug to me, though I'm not sure.
> Basically /usr/lib/ImageMagick-6.2.4/config/type.xml, as installed,
> refers to type-ghostscript.xml, which refers to fonts that are not
> installed (we don't have any Type 1 fonts installed). The ImageMagick
> examples page ( http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/graphics/imagick6/ )
> suggests using a script to enumerate fonts:
> http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/graphics/imagick6/scripts/imagick_type_gen (this produces a replacement for type.xml). I did that and it seems to work fine. The proper way would probably involve having every installed font package add a file to be included in type.xml. (Well, ideally, there would be a type.d directory, I suppose :) )

Our needing to edit a configuration file which is stored
in /usr/lib/ImageMagick-6.2.4/config makes me nervous. It's going to get
overwritten on upgrades, since it's not a conffile, right?

[Richard Laager (rlaager)]

Perhaps this package should be using Defoma: "Defoma, which stands for DEbian FOnt MAnager, provides a framework for automatic font configuration. An application whose configuration of fonts usually requires manual intervention can automate the process through Defoma, by installing a Defoma-configuration script. The script gets called whenever a font is installed and removed, so that the script may update the application configuration."

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 alpha?

[Juan Cespedes (cespedes)]

Yes, it is. AFAIK, fonts configuration have not changed in ImageMagick; it still does not use defoma to be able to use new fonts, and it still comes with a fixed set of fonts, which may not be installed on your system.

[Alex Mauer (hawke)]

Still a problem in Jaunty.

[Reuben Thomas (rrt)]

What is annoying is that this used to work, and still does in Debian lenny with Imagemagick 6.3.7: when I type

convert -list font

I get all the fonts listed that are accessible to fontconfig, as far as I can tell, including fonts installed in my home directory. I have no ~/.magick directory at all on that machine.

Since the Ubuntu imagemagick packages appear to be derived from the Debian packages, perhaps this can be sorted out with the Debian packagers? I note that the Debian package (lenny and sid) depends on libfontconfig1, whereas the Jaunty Ubuntu package doesn't. I can see nothing in the Ubuntu changelog.Debian.gz about this.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

According to the Debian bug report this is fixed in version 7:6.5.9.8-1 which is included in Ubuntu since Maverick. Subsequently I am setting this to Fix Released.