Refining The Default Fonts for Ubuntu

[Edward H. Trager]

Hi, List Members,

Yesterday I tried Ubuntu 5.10 "The Breezy Badger" Preview Release and
I am impressed with Ubuntu.

The first thing I like is the fact that Ubuntu is FAST.

The second thing I like is that Ubuntu TAKES INTERNATIONALIZATION
SERIOUSLY.  Case in point: Ubuntu's build of Firefox supports Hindi
and other Indic languages. Congratulations!  Now if only the default
mozilla.org builds would do so ...

Keep up the good work!

In order to help Ubuntu become the Linux of choice for even more human
beings, allow me to make the following observations:


1. CONSOLE MODE INSTALLER ARABIC OPTION NOT USABLE
--------------------------------------------------

The text-mode installer has an option for "Arabic" but the Arabic
letters are rendered on the console in left-to-right, unjoined manner.
 In other words, it is totally wrong and unusable, since as we all
know Arabic is a right-to-left cursive joined script.  Maybe it looks OK in
the GUI installer (which did not work on my machine, so I was presented 
the text installer), but clearly it is useless for the text installer.

Maybe the Ubuntu developers can take a page out of mlterm
(http://mlterm.sourceforge.net) which provides a solution for BIDI and
rendering Arabic on the console (Using the bitmap GNU Unifont, I
believe).  Arabic on the console in mlterm is not pretty, but it has
correct directionality and correct joining behaviour and is readable.


2. DEFAULT OUT-OF-BOX NON-LATIN FONT SELECTION NEEDS MORE WORK
--------------------------------------------------------------

Ubuntu does an admirable job of supplying fonts for non-Latin scripts
out-of-the box.  This is good.  But you could do even better!

2.1. KOREAN: Ubuntu supplies Baemuk fonts for Korean, but Jungshik
Shin reported some time ago (maybe a year or more ago) 
that the "Un" series of fonts are better
and should be used instead.

2.2. CHINESE:
For Chinese Ubuntu has some Arphic GB and Big5 fonts but Ubuntu
really should be using Debian Taiwan's Arphic-derived Unicode Ming and
Unicode ZenKai fonts which have both the traditional and simplified
characters together with Unicode CMAPs in the TTF files.  If you test, for example,
the following Chinese web pages on a vanilla installation of this release
of Ubuntu, you will see that Firefox is forced to use a
weird mix of glyphs from the different out-of-the-box font files:

    http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/earthrace/index-simplified-chinese.html
    http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/earthrace/index-traditional-chinese.html

The resulting mix of glyphs looks bad and simply would not occur if Ubuntu shipped with
the better Debian Taiwan "uming.ttf" and "ukai.ttf" fonts.  Also note that Arne Götje
continues to work on these and is adding the Hong Kong Supplemental Character Set
(HKSCS) and other glyphs to the fonts, so they will not remain static but continue
to improve over time.  I am sure they already contain many more Unicode characters than
the legacy Arphic GB and Big5 font files.

2.3. Japanese:
This release of Ubuntu has the Kochi fonts which were, if I remember correctly, discovered
to contain copies of outlines from a commercial font and are thus of questionable legality.
The Sazanami  Gothic and Mincho fonts provided by the Wada Laboratory of the University of 
Tokyo and the Electronic Font Open Laboratory were released specifically to provide an
Open Source Japanese font solution to replace Kochi.  Ubuntu needs to use Sazanami instead.

All of these fonts and quality Unicode fonts for many other scripts are documented 
on my  "Unicode Font Guide For
Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems" site at:

     http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/fontguide/


If I have time, I'll take a more in-depth look at other internationalization aspects
in Ubuntu.

Best Wishes --


-- Ed Trager
  Maintainer of "Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source
Operating Systems"
  (http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/fontguide/)
  and the (currently out-of-date) "A Quick Primer On Unicode and Software
  Internationalization Under Linux and UNIX"
  (http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode)