UVFe & FFe: New upstream version of Ubuntu Font Family 0.80

[Paul Sladen]

Upstream version 0.80 release announcement:

  https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/font/2011-September/000001.html

Upstream status, release notes and changelog can be found at:

  https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+milestone/0.80

The new upstream version includes five extra .ttf font files; one for Ubuntu Condensed, and four covering Ubuntu Mono, a monospace set that is presently in the process of being hinted by Vincent Connare. The compressed, and uncompressed sizes of the additional files involved at:

  $ for i in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ubuntu-font-family/Ubuntu{-C,Mono-}*.ttf ; do echo `basename $i`; wc -c < $i ; gzip -c < $i | wc -c ; done | xargs -n3 echo | tr " " "\t" | awk 'BEGIN{print "Name\t\tUncompressed\tCompressed";U=0;C=0}{U+=$2;C+=$3;print}END{print "Totals:\t\t\t"int(U/1024)"kB",int(C/1024)"kB"}'
  Name Uncomp Compressed
  Ubuntu-C.ttf 350420 169738
  UbuntuMono-BI.ttf 216208 128324
  UbuntuMono-B.ttf 191400 108844
  UbuntuMono-RI.ttf 210216 116292
  UbuntuMono-R.ttf 205748 113208
  Totals: 1146kiB 621KiB

An available-size budget of ~621kB kB would be required. It is intended that the increased of 621kB in disk space will be traded by shipping roughly three wallpapers less. Should an UVFe and FFe be granted, this would allow providing fixes for:

   Bug #853855 ("PUA: ensure that Ubuntu Circle of Friends logo is full size")
   Bug #640382 ("Wish for addition of a monospaced member to the family")
   Bug #791076 ("Emacs: choosing normal monospace font in Emacs but gives bold-italic")
   Bug #820493 ("Mono: No hinting yet - Ubuntu Beta Mono font looks jagged")

The additional presence of these fonts would be unlikely affect the appearance of the Ubuntu experience unless they were actually used by a theme configuration or otherwise enabled by the user. The release candidate (0.80~rc) packages have been on-test for several days by ~2,000 people inside Canonical and the Ubuntu font beta team. The only issues picked up so far are with sub-optimal hinting, but this is known to be a work-in-progress, with non-final hinting for the Ubuntu Mono being delivered by Dalton Maag on 2011-09-22 in order to enable testing and inclusion before the Ubuntu Freeze deadline.

Hinting is an optimisation stage that distorts the shapes in the font for black-and-white only rendering and it is not necessary for the functioning of the fonts in the environment required.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Have raised this on #ubuntu-release:

  http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/09/19/%23ubuntu-release.html#t22:48

One possibility would be to trade 3–4 wallpapers from the 'ubuntu-wallpapers' collection (see bug #829213).

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

This version contains a fixed Ubuntu roundel which we use in Unity (), so it would be much appreciated if this could be granted to finish-off the look (UIFe for that already granted).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

On Thursday, September 29, 2011 04:51:22 PM you wrote:
> The only
> issues picked up so far are with sub-optimal hinting, but this is known
> to be a work-in-progress, with unfinished hinting being delivered by
> Dalton Maag to enable a week of testing and inclusion before the Ubuntu
> Freeze deadline.

Today is final freeze. How does this get done?

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I've checked and the Kubuntu images have room for this. I had planned on
adding a language pack back to some images and if this FFe is approved, I'll
skip that.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

ScottK: Thank you for the important question about testing; the 'ttf-ubuntu-font-family=0.80~rc-0ubuntu3+arabic+console' package was deployed via the beta test PPA. The font beta test team can be viewed/joined at:

  http://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-typeface-interest

And additionally to a Canonical internal PPA; the (lack of negative) feedback has come from those self-selected teams. The version (proposed) for upload is 'ttf-ubuntu-font-family=0.80-0ubuntu1~medium'. This has medium dropped (as in the existing package), and the 'fonts-font-ubuntu-family-console'-assoicated packaging code has been commented out because 'otf2bdf' and 'bdf2psf' are not yet in main and would require MIRs to enable the extra binary package to build containing the .psf console 8x16 bitmaps.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Right, but the bug said it would get a week of testing before the freeze.
Since the freeze is today, that's not possible.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Scott: I have deleted the words "a week of" and replaced it with last Thursday's date. I'm sorry that the wording was problematic.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-font-family-sources - 0.80-0ubuntu1~medium

---------------
ubuntu-font-family-sources (0.80-0ubuntu1~medium) oneiric; urgency=low

  * New upstream release 0.80 (LP: #854264)
    * Ubuntu (x8 weights)
    + Ubuntu Condensed (x1 weight)
    + Ubuntu Mono (x4 weights)

  * Upstream Ubuntu Font Family version 0.80:
    [Vincent Connare/Dalton Maag]
    * Wish for addition of a monospaced member to the family (LP: #640382)
    * Mono: No hinting yet - Ubuntu Beta Mono font looks jagged in
      Netbeans and terrible with ClearType (LP: #820493)
    * Emacs: choosing normal monospace font in Emacs but gives bold-italic
      (LP: #791076)
    * PUA: ensure that Ubuntu Circle of Friends logo is full size: (LP: #853855)
      + U+E0FF becomes large size in proportionals, remains small width in
        monospaces
      + U+F0FF becomes small size (proportionals only)
      + U+F200 is full ubuntu logomark (proportionals only)
    [Paul Sladen]
    * Monospace: Patch Family Name to be "Ubuntu Mono"
    * Monospace: Patch U+EFFD version debugging glyph to be '0.8'
    [Cody Boisclair]
    * Monospace: Force .null HDMX advance to 500
    * Monospace: Remap ASCII box-drawing characters (LP: #788757)
    [Júlio Reis]
    * Date corrections to 'FONTLOG' (LP: #836595)

  [Paul Sladen]
  * Bump Standards-Version:
  * Drop superseded Deforma dependency (LP: #633508)
  * Switch packaging from CDBS to Debhelper 7 (LP: #633508)
 -- Paul Sladen <email address hidden> Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:20:36 +0100