Fonts in a KDE application

[Lauri Watts]

On Wednesday 06 April 2005 10.36, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> For three reasons:
>  - Everybody knows packagers are not perfect and kdeedu is not one of the
> most important packages out there so probably we won't get the right thing
> done - Because if we do like konsole, fonts won't get installed for people
> that install from tarballs, should i remember that tarballs are the ONLY
> supported form of distribution of KDE?

Packagers are not mind readers, but are often expected to be.  Where is it 
documented where these fonts should be installed?  Have you told the 
packagers where to find this documentation?  There is a README and an INSTALL 
in the top of kdeedu, it seems to be the usual boilerplate though - isn't 
that a great place to put actual readme and installation information so 
everyone knows it?

The Amarok guys do a nice job of this with a web page:
http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/index.php/Packaging_amaroK

Perhaps this is a nice junior job or something for the quality teams to take 
up.  It wouldn't take but a minute for someone who actually is familiar with 
the applications, to write.

Most of the KDE modules, have boilerplate README's, no useful installation 
documentation for packagers, and you know, this information is useful to 
developers and home compilers too - sometimes the only way I know a 
dependency was added is when I can't even find the configuration item 
everyone is busy reporting broken on bugs.kde.org.

If you don't want to make a web page, at least keep the top-of-the-tarball 
README up to date, put something useful in the INSTALL file, and make sure 
the dependencies list that is already at 
http://www.kde.org/info/requirements/3.4.php is a good start.  I don't think 
anyone would object to adding things like runtime dependencies on fonts to 
that list, for instance (if their being non present causes the application to 
fail to run, it's just as much a dependency as any library is)

>  - What's wrong on calling kfmclient copy $appdata/fonts/<font_name>.ttf
> fonts:/ on the first run of the program that needs the fonts?

Note it will have to be fonts:/Personal, because my 5 year old daughter 
doesn't have the root password to her computer, and nor is she getting it any 
time soon, at least not until she's learn to spell her surname and home 
address, stop calling kicker 'The Clock' and like her desktop bright pink and 
in <random-language-of-the-week>.   She'd be too scary as a mini-BOFH, don't 
you think?  No, no system font installing after an upgrade for her.

> PS: I might be wrong, but i got the impression konsole puts the fonts in
> $appdata/fonts and makes the user do the work of installing fonts on their
> system.

Konsole also has the bonus of working quite happily without them.  They're 
just a bonus, not required (and yes, it does that, but since the packagers 
*know* it's doing that, it's easily automated)

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://docs.kde.org
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org
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