diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'README.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 53 |
1 files changed, 53 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..ee6720fd604b --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +# Noto CJK Variable Fonts + +## What's up with all these split packages? + +That's a lot of split packages, I suggest that you start by reading the fonts formats documentation in the +`README.md` files of the [Sans](https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/blob/main/Sans/README.md) or [Serif](https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/blob/main/Serif/README.md) fonts before asking what you should install. + +There are 3 types of packages here: + +* `noto-fonts-cjk-vf`: `Variable OTCs` + It's recommended to set the `LANG` or `LANGUAGE` environment variables (e.g. `LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8`), + which will select the correct glyphs. + Without it, the fonts might fall back to Japanese glyphs when the language of a text cannot be defined or + auto-recognized (or too costly to recognize) by the application, and the OpenType locl is not being set. + Other environment variables: `FC_LANG`, `PANGO_LANGUAGE`. + For this to work correctly, HarfBuzz 3.3.0 or newer is required, see more details below. +* `noto-fonts-cjk{-language}-vf`: `Variable Multilingual OTF` + Multi-lingual CJK with a default language set for applications that don't apply OpenType locl. + You can still set `LANG` or `LANGUAGE` environment variables and the setting will be respected, + but if you don't then it will use the default language set in the font. +* `noto-fonts{-language}-vf`: `Variable Region-specific OTF` + Containing only a subset version of the font for a specific language. + Multi-lingual monospace font is packaged because there aren't subset versions of monospace fonts. + I'm not completely sure about the font config for the monospace font, so feedback would be appreciated. + +## Variable OTCs and HarfBuzz <3.0.0 + +Before HarfBuzz 3.3.0, the `Variable OTCs` fonts were pretty much unusable with apps that use Pango for rendering fonts. +It was possible to make them sort of working by explicitly configuring apps to load the specific regional/language +font variant (e.g. `Noto Sans CJK SC`), and by using the `<alias>` and `<prefer>` elements in `fonts.conf` +(see details in [the Arch Wiki](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fonts#Fallback_font_order)), but it was a hit-and-miss, and it should have worked without any extra setting, +automatically loading the missing glyphs from the fonts. +From what I can tell, it's fixed since HarfBuzz 3.3.0, but anything that brings it own +outdated `libharfbuzz.so` will still be broken. This means Flatpak, AppImage, proprietary, etc. +[My MR backporting the needed changes to the Freedesktop Flatpak runtime](https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/freedesktop-sdk/-/merge_requests/7971) was merged, so you can expect that this +issue will be fixed for applications that use the following runtimes or newer: `Freedesktop 21.08`, `Gnome 41`, `KDE 5.15-21.08`. + +## Other notes + +* The packaged fonts versions will lag a couple of days behind the latest upstream release. + This is because Github's auto-generated tarball for the latest git commit is not available + immediately, likely due to the size of ref checkout. + I prefer to avoid switching to a git source, as cloning is too slow, and ~7GB git repo is not + something I want to keep around for a package that does not requires frequent updates. + +## Updates + +* 2022-04-01: The issue affecting Variable OTCs is related to HarfBuzz and was fixed in version 3.3.0. + So this is fixed not only for system installed applications, but soon also with Flatpak applications that + use runtimes based on `Freedesktop 21.08`, as the runtime's libharfbuzz 3.0.0 is patched with the fix. +* 2022-02-23: A section about OpenType locl issue with Pango apps was added. It's recommended to avoid the + `Variable OTCs` package. +* 2022-01-26: There are now variable Serif fonts for all the languages. The generated packages are much smaller. |