Bugzilla – Bug 1216494
ghostscript to require ghostscript-fonts? - No!
Last modified: 2023-10-24 11:16:43 UTC
Should ghostscript require ghostscript-fonts-std? Right now it's recommended by pattern-fonts but only makes sense with ghostscript, right?
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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -----------------------------------------------------------