Revisiting font defaults for dapper

[Matthias Klose]

Summary: The choice of DejaVu as a default font leads to regressions in
printing and viewing documents either created on other platforms and
viewed on dapper, or created on dapper and viewed on other platforms
caused by metric differences in the DejaVu fonts. This is a proposal to
default to metric compatible fonts and just use DejaVu at the places
where it should be used.


[Not being a font export, please correct me, where I am wrong]

The choice of a default font for dapper wouldn't much matter, if either
the fonts are only used in the GUI, or documents created on dapper would
never leave dapper, or you are not viewing/printing documents on dapper
created on other platforms. Apparently that is not the case. Problems
include

- viewing PDF documents (see #31596) leads to display problems
  using the DejaVu and Bitstream fonts (printing these may be ok,
  depending on the availability of the "correct" fonts in the printer.

- Importing .doc files might lead to a changed formatting of the
  document. Some applications like OOo handle this on their own.

- Viewing documents on other platforms where the DejaVu fonts are
  not available and replacement fonts with different metrics are
  choosen.

Most fonts are copyrighted, so everybody who doesn't want to license a
font, creates a replacement font (Adobe: Times, Helvetica, Microsoft:
Vera(?), Arial, Xfree86: Nimbus Roman, Luxi Sans). fontconfig has a list
of preferences which font should be used if a font for "Sans" or "Sans
Serif" is requested. On breezy our first choice are the Bitstream Vera
fonts, on dapper that was changed to DejaVu.

The proposal is to have a metric compatible font (compared to the
Adobe/Microsoft fonts) as the first preference, so that this font is
used everywhere, where not another font is explicitely listed. This
looks to be the safe approach, if you do not want to scan each
application not to use DejaVu fonts by default; there are applications
which do not allow own preferences for fonts.

Change the fontconfig defaults:

- Serif font: Use "Nimbus Roman No9 L" as the preference. Move
  Bitstream/DejaVu after Thorndale/Luxi.

- Sans Serif font: Use "Nimbus Sans L" as the preference. Move
  Bitstream/DejaVu after Albany/Luxi.

- Monospace font: Use "Nimbus Mono L" as the preference. Move
  Bitstream/DejaVu after Cumberland/Luxi.

Then modify applications to use the DejaVu fonts where wanted:

- Gnome: Explicitely default to DejaVu for the GUI, except for
  the document font.

- KDE: Explicitely default to DejaVu, except for the document
  font (if KDE has such a font preference).

- Xubuntu: ?

- Firefox/Thunderbird: Make a choice in the preferences where
  needed.

One drawback I've observed with evince: The Nimbus fonts are processed
slower than the DejaVu fonts (Nimbus are Type1 fonts, DejaVu are
Truetype fonts).

Looking at other distributions:

- Fedora: Serif: Nimbus Roman, Thorndale AMT, Bitstream Vera,
  Times New Roman, Luxi, ...
  Sans Serif: Luxi Sans, Albany AMT, Bitstream, Verdana, Arial,
  Nimbus, ...
  Monospace: Luxi, Bitstream, Andale, Courir, Cumberland AMT

- OpenSuse: Serif: Times New Roman, Thorndale AMT, Nimbus, DejaVu,
  Suse, Bitstream Luxi
  Sans Serif: Arial, Albany AMT, Nimbus Sans, Verdana, DejaVu,
  Suse, Bitstream, Luxi
  Monospace: Courier New, Cumberland AMT, Nimbus, Andale DejaVu,
  Suse Bitstream, Luxi

That means, that both distributions prefer Nimbus over DejaVu, OpenSuse
prefers the MS fonts (msttcorefonts) over Nimbus when installed.

The AMT fonts (Agfa) are non-free, the Luxi fonts as well (B&H license),
the MS fonts as well, the Adobe fonts as well.

The consequences of the DejaVu->Nimbus change still need investigation
for the CJK languages