Noto fonts screw my system, please stop forcing fonts upon me!

[Mark Gaiser]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 1:05 AM, Eike Hein <hein at kde.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 12/18/2015 12:42 AM, Mark Gaiser wrote:
> > I consider that to be one of the biggest issues in plasma.
>
> It's a case-by-case thing. The actual installed size of Noto
> depends a lot on how a distro choses to package it (split by
> writing system vs big monolothic package). If a reasonable
> subset of Noto's language coverage is installed it obviates
> the need for a lot of other fonts that would previously be
> installed by distros to achieve the same coverage, but
> contain plenty of redundant glyphs. A distro can well make
> the default install smaller by packaging and using Noto well,
> and you can expect distros - independent of KDE's decision -
> to come to this conclusion soon. It's a really useful font
> package.
>
>
> > If i report font issues, nobody is looking at them anyway. See [1] for
> > oxygen.
>
> That's disproven by the existence of this thread. The lack
> of maintenance for Oxygen is something we actively tried to
> solve, and when we couldn't, we addressed it by switching.
>
> IOW people definitely looked at it and that's why we're here
> now.
>
>
> > Besides, this is a google font so i would have to report it against
> > their bug tracker (github in this case i guess?). But what if the thing
> > i want to report is not a bug at all? To mee, it just looks that way
> > because it has too much line spacing. But the font just seems to be that
> > way so the font itself is probably not the problem here. Just using it
> > as desktop font is the problem and _that_ is where plasma comes in.
>
> "It's not what I like" != "it's a bug". We offer
> customization options for users to tailor the experience
> to their individual preferences. Defaults do matter very
> much, and I've made the case for why Noto is a good default
> that improves the experience for many users. Those users
> seem to have different needs from yours and you seem
> overly focused on yours.
>
> Users in a CJK country, with previous font setups, would
> see stuff like a clash of visually incongruent type faces
> within the same line if it mixed Latin and a CJK character
> set, and varying line heights if a line contained only the
> one or the other. This sort of mess is gone now. This does
> address real bug reports you could have (probably still
> can, tbh) find on BKO as well.
>

For me It should look good in english or dutch and that's fine.
Having said that. If there is a font which looks just good in all
languages, they yes. That would obviously be the preferred font. Noto is
not that font.

>
> (This was also the case with Latin/Cyrillic and Latin/Arabic
> mixes specifically on Oxygen, since Oxygen really only did
> Latin. And that's before you get into newer needs like
> emoji.)
>
>
> > If THAT combination isn't tested by google, then perhaps that
> > combination is not meant to used at all.
>
> Noto is the default sans-serif font family used on Google
> Chrome OS, for chrissakes. It was basically *made for
> Chrome*.
>
> Something is wrong. I see it and the font is causing it. Removing the font
removes the issue. Installing the font (just having it!) gives me the issue.


>
> > I'm not going to send you a screenshot. Just install the font and run
> > chromium. At first you will instantly notice the fonts looking weirdly
> > different with more space around them. Then you start noticing layout
> > breakage. Then you start wondering: "hmm, what screwed my system up this
> > time".. two days later you will figure out it's a font installed by
> plasma.
>
> I still don't see anything like this in Chrome here, FWIW.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Eike
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