install-font script (was: groff 1.23.0.rc2 readiness)

[G. Branden Robinson]

I wanted to update this sub-thread with some further information,
particularly if people see places they could pitch in and help.

At 2022-05-26T09:59:59-0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2022-05-26T10:29:04-0400, T. Kurt Bond wrote:
> > I really need to get the install-font script POSIXfied then, don't
> > I?  Is there a specific timeframe?
> 
> I don't have one to impose.  I can't do an RC myself because (1) I
> don't know how to do the part that interacts with alpha.gnu.org
> infrastructure and (2) there's something involving signing keys (a
> wise safeguard).
> 
> I will say that I had basically resigned myself to not having this
> feature in groff 1.23.0.  Having dug more into font issues over the
> past several months, I am starting to think it might be cleaner to get
> PostScript and PDF device font description management improved
> _within_ the groff source tree, then leverage that improvement in
> shipping tools.
> 
> I got as far as fixing up the X11 font description stuff, now
> mentioned in the "FOR-RELEASE" file, and I started working on Adobe
> Type 1 fonts, but had to put that on the shelf (read: in my Git stash)
> because something more urgent came up.

I got farther along on this than I remembered.  I landed a fair amount
of the new infrastructure we'll need, build-wise, in March.

2022-03-13  G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>

        * font/devps/devps.am: Rename targets.
        (fonts):
        (devps_fonts): Rename these...
        (maintainer-font-descriptions):
        (devps_font-descriptions): ...to these.  Add comments explaining
        what they're for and why they aren't used in a build.

        * font/devps/generate/Makefile: Add `outdir` variable to store
        destination directory of font description files, and update all
        targets that write artifacts to use this directory.  This makes
        the targets "phony", which I don't regard as a problem since the
        generated artifacts are kept under source control, and this
        isn't really a user-facing script (even though it gets
        installed).  I think there is a good chance that this will
        become a shell script, because to avoid regressions we need to
        generate the font descriptions using both the 229-glyph and
        314-glyph versions of the Adobe fonts' AFM files (so that we get
        wider glyph coverage _and_ more kerning pair data) and we need
        to add kerning information for the ellipsis (Savannah #58897).
        (symbolsl.afm): Revise generation process to be sensitive to
        failure.

There are still wrinkles.  A consistent "download" file format for both
the 'ps' and 'pdf' devices would be nice to have and enable us to
reduce the amount of tooling we write.  (Savannah #58036)[1]

Just within the past couple of days, on this list, it came to light that
our generation of Foundry files might be buggy, omitting the Ghostscript
font search path.[2]

The BuildFoundries script, if it is to become a shipping tool, could,
like install-font.sh itself, use some ergonomic improvement, like a
usage message, a man page, and a name that meshes well with existing
command naming conventions.  One thing I'd like to _avoid_ is starting
utility command names with the prefix "groff-"--while that would
otherwise be laudable (and virtually certain not to collide with any
other usage), it will be annoying to tab-complete for people who want
just the ordinary "groff" command, which I expect will be run far more
often than integration tools for fonts.

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?58036
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2022-06/msg00012.html

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature