Bug 1216494

I know basically nothing about font packaging.
I don't know whether or not other packages may
somehow depend on the ghostscript-fonts packages.
Perhaps ghostscript-fonts packages could be even removed?

Since a longer time Ghostscript
does not require any additional font package because
the PostScript standard fonts are included in Ghostscript.

See
https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/Printing/ghostscript/ghostscript.changes?expand=1
(excerpt)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Fri Mar 16 12:39:36 CET 2018 - jsmeix@suse.de
...
- Do no longer require any fonts packages in particular
  neither require ghostscript-fonts-std because the PostScript
  Base35 fonts are provided by Ghostscript (in 'Resource')
  nor require ghostscript-fonts-other (provides Bitream Charter,
  Adobe Utopia, URW Antiqua, URW Grotesq and Hershey fonts where
  all but the last are also provided by texlive-<name>-fonts) and
  those fonts are not required for PostScript compliance, see
  https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1082896#c13
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Additionally there is in OBS Printing the package
urw-base35-fonts
https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/Printing/urw-base35-fonts

AFAICS this is about Type1 fonts. All fonts that are included in ghostscript-fonts-std are also available as TrueType fonts in ghostscript-fonts-std-converted and xorg-x11-fonts-converted.

Are there any applications that require Type1 fonts because they don't handle TrueType and/or OpenType? AFAICS only *real* legacy applications would. Even Adobe's own applications have ceased to support Type1 this year.

Perhaps Type1 fonts are still necessary for some old PostScript printers, but that doesn't justify installing them on every TW/Leap system.

On my TW system, the only packages with type1 fonts are ghostscript-fonts-std, texlive-lm-fonts and xorg-x11-fonts-legacy.

Btw, I would suggest renaming these packages such that "type1" appears in the package name. That would indicate to users why they might or might not want to have them, and would improve search results.

ok, just wanted to clarify it's not needed by ghostscript. Assigning to patterns-fonts maintainer then.

I've also filed
https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/1119673

FYI
what requires/recommends/suggests
ghostscript-fonts-std ghostscript-fonts-other
ghostscript-fonts-std-converted on a new installed
Tumbleweed version 20231022 with its standard repositories
(output reduced here to only show package names):
-----------------------------------------------------------
# for p in ghostscript-fonts-std \
           ghostscript-fonts-other \
           ghostscript-fonts-std-converted ; \
  do for q in --requires --recommends --suggests ; \
     do echo ==== $q for $p ==== ; zypper search $q $p ; \
     done ; \
  done

==== --requires for ghostscript-fonts-std ====
 a2ps
 cedilla
 dia
 emacs-x11
 enscript
 ghostscript-fonts-other
 patterns-aeon-base
 patterns-microos-desktop-gnome
 suse-xsl-stylesheets
 texlive-aboensis-fonts
 texlive-academicons-fonts
...
[348 more texlive-.*-fonts packages]
...
 texlive-zapfchan-fonts
 texlive-zapfding-fonts
 xfig

==== --recommends for ghostscript-fonts-std ====
 ghostscript-fonts
 gnumeric
 patterns-fonts-fonts
 transfig

==== --suggests for ghostscript-fonts-std ====
No matching items found.


==== --requires for ghostscript-fonts-other ====
 patterns-aeon-base
 patterns-microos-desktop-gnome

==== --recommends for ghostscript-fonts-other ====
 ghostscript-fonts
 patterns-fonts-fonts_opt

==== --suggests for ghostscript-fonts-other ====
No matching items found.


==== --requires for ghostscript-fonts-std-converted ====
No matching items found.

==== --recommends for ghostscript-fonts-std-converted ====
No matching items found.

==== --suggests for ghostscript-fonts-std-converted ====
No matching items found.
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