408497 - Include DejaVu fonts

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Andrés Delfino]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2007121505 Minefield/3.0b3pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2007121505 Minefield/3.0b3pre

IMHO, that would support the use of Unicode characters from Web masters.

List of the supported sets:
http://dejavu.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/dejavu/tags/version_2_22/dejavu-fonts/unicover.txt

Licensing details:
http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/License

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Andrés Delfino]

Forgot to mention its home page:
http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Comment 2

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

We don't ship fonts at all, I don't think this has enough of an argument, other than a fairly weak chicken and end.  Also not sure how the license would play with MPL tri-license

Comment 3

[Andrés Delfino]

License would be an issue, but at least analyze this, better Unicode support allows designers to avoid stupid graphics like triangles, when text could be used.

Comment 4

[[:Aleksej]]

“The Font Software may be sold as part of a larger software package but no copy of one or more of the Font Software typefaces may be sold by itself.” sounds incompatible with the tri-license. Not sure it is all that free even, though it does not restrict the larger package type.

Comment 5

[Felix Miata]

For Windows and Mac systems there's debatable need for DejaVu. For those with newer Linux systems, they're probably already installed (by default). For those with older Linux systems, it might be useful to include them in system requirements as recommended rather than as part of any Mozilla product download package.

Comment 6

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> “The Font Software may be sold as part of a larger software package but no
> copy of one or more of the Font Software typefaces may be sold by itself.”
> sounds incompatible with the tri-license. Not sure it is all that free even,
> though it does not restrict the larger package type.
> 

At Gnome site is written:

> Q: I don't understand the resale restriction... What gives?
> 
> A: Bitstream is giving away these fonts, but wishes to ensure its competitors 
> can't just drop the fonts as is into a font sale system and sell them as is. 
> It seems fair that if Bitstream can't make money from the Bitstream Vera 
> fonts, their competitors should not be able to do so either. You can sell the 
> fonts as part of any software package, however.

http://www.gnome.org/fonts/index.html#Final_Bitstream_Vera_Fonts

Do you think it's incompatible with tri-licence?


It should be done something like this: when a Mozilla product is installed, the installer checks if DejaVu font is installed. If yes, the installer asks if you want to go to DejaVu site. Obviously this must be done with the assent of DejaVu group.

I'm in favour of suggesting an "universal" font. I written my thoughts here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=3392299#3392299

Comment 7

[Nicolas Mailhot]

(In reply to comment #5)
> For Windows and Mac systems there's debatable need for DejaVu.

DejaVu includes glyphs for many minority scripts that Microsoft does not support at all.

I don't know if shipping dejavu with firefox is or is not a good idea (OpenOffice.org certainly thinks shipping it is good for them). I do know that the Mozilla Foundation could do a lot for the Free web by identifying and sponsoring notable free and open font projects (DejaVu, Stix, Liberation, SIL fonts, GFS fonts, etc) needed to display text in browsers and other applications (instead of relying on proprietary limited projects like the Microsoft Core fonts).

Mozilla Foundation people probably know best if the most effective sponsorship would be to
— bundle those fonts in Firefox
— direct Firefox users to them from Mozilla sites
– inject some money in those projects
– inject some work in those projects (pay people to complete missing unicode blocks, incite professional type designers to work on them via some Firefox ego-strocking)
— liberate other fonts (like Red Hat did with Liberation)
– all of this

Comment 8

[Stephanie Daugherty [:sdaugherty]]

enhancement triage: (Checked for duplicates, report is clearly stated, and made best effort to match to correct component) -> NEW

Comment 9

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

The files we distribute are listed in the package manifest.
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/installer/package-manifest.in

So, if the fonts can be used from within our installation directory then getting the fonts into the tree and packaged into a location from which they can be used will work on all platforms.

If additional actions are required (e.g. installation into a system font location) then quite a bit more work will be needed and we only have this capability on Windows when the user is either running as admin or accepts elevation on Win Vista and above.

Comment 10

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

I have no idea if this bug is still valid, I just know it isn't an installer bug, so all I can really do is move it.