Bug 1779123 - Pango no longer supports type1 fonts
Summary: Pango no longer supports type1 fonts
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: pango
Version: 36
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Peng Wu
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
: 1785548 (view as bug list)
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2019-12-03 11:00 UTC by Michael J Gruber
Modified: 2023-04-26 04:01 UTC (History)
15 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2023-04-26 04:01:10 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Michael J Gruber 2019-12-03 11:00:40 UTC
Description of problem:
In pango 1.44, pango dropped support for type1 fonts. Therefore, no application which uses pango for font loading can use type1 fonts any more.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
pango-1.44.6-1.fc31.x86_64 (and later)

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Upgrade F31 or rawhide
2. Open any pango-using application
3. Try to use type1 font

Actual results:
No type1 font is usable

Expected results:
Type1 font is usable

Additional info:
bug 1753295 is the same bug for dropped bitmap font support. Over there, workarounds specific for bitmap fonts (conversion to opentype bitmap fonts) are discussed. An attempt to discuss type1 there failed.

This bug here is specifically about type1 fonts to discuss ways (or their absence) to deal with pangos dropped type 1 support.

Comment 1 Nicolas Mailhot 2019-12-03 12:07:40 UTC
LibreOffice already dropped Type 1 support for the same reasons several years ago

And it produced the same kind of user pushback.

And in the end, no one did anything, probably because our stash of OpenType vector fonts is rich enough nowadays, no one found it worth his time to rescue Type 1 fonts.

#bug 1753295 is quite different, because the user population here, is composed of people who have been resisting migration to vector fonts for at least 25 years (and, because they didn't want to use vector fonts ever at all, have been deliberately buying low resolution screens that work for bitmap fonts but not vector fonts).

Comment 2 Michael J Gruber 2019-12-03 12:23:01 UTC
(In reply to Nicolas Mailhot from comment #1)
> LibreOffice already dropped Type 1 support for the same reasons several
> years ago
> 
> And it produced the same kind of user pushback.
> 
> And in the end, no one did anything, probably because our stash of OpenType
> vector fonts is rich enough nowadays, no one found it worth his time to
> rescue Type 1 fonts.
> 
> #bug 1753295 is quite different, because the user population here, is
> composed of people who have been resisting migration to vector fonts for at
> least 25 years (and, because they didn't want to use vector fonts ever at
> all, have been deliberately buying low resolution screens that work for
> bitmap fonts but not vector fonts).

Would you please refrain from spreading the same user bashing in yet another bug?

This bug is specifically for documenting the need for a transition from type1 fonts to opentype fonts and the tools in Fedora (or absence thereof) to do so.

You seem to claim there is no way to convert type1 fonts to opentype. Do I understand that correctly? In this case, the lack of type1 font support in Fedora 31 (which comes at no surprise to you) is something that needs to be documented, like any major incompatible change in functionality, surprising to some or not.

Comment 3 Nicolas Mailhot 2019-12-03 12:44:07 UTC
The transition from Type 1 already happened years ago while you were not looking. 

Thanks to TEX Gyre, and LibreOffice dropping Type1 support, and years of work by many people, including myself, including documentation work.

The main Fedora application that uses vector fonts, LibreOffice, deprecated them in version 5.3, so that makes it a Fedora 26 change (6 releases ago)

Bitmap is a special last-redoubt case. It’s not a generic font situation, no matter how much you want to make it.

Comment 4 Nicolas Mailhot 2019-12-03 12:52:09 UTC
As for conversion to OpenType, CFF OpenType (OTF) was specifically designed to allow Adobe converting its large store of Type1 fonts to OpenType without data loss (the outline format within OTF is pretty much the same as within Type 1 fonts).

So Type 1 conversion is mostly opening up Type 1 font files in fontforge, fix the font metadata (all the metadata available or strictly specified in OpenType, that were missing or badly specified in Type 1, and saving the result as OTF.

Since a lot of real-world fonts have garbage in their metadata fields all that matters practically is fixing the naming fields ie apply OpenType Name ID 16/17 rules instead of reporting the limitations of Type1 naming in OpenType
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/name#name-ids

TEX Gyre took a lot more work than that because the project was not just converting legacy Type1 fonts, it was fixing and extending them.

Comment 6 Michael J Gruber 2019-12-03 12:57:35 UTC
(In reply to Nicolas Mailhot from comment #3)
> The transition from Type 1 already happened years ago while you were not
> looking. 

Keep issueing personal accusations and get flagged.

> Thanks to TEX Gyre, and LibreOffice dropping Type1 support, and years of
> work by many people, including myself, including documentation work.
> 
> The main Fedora application that uses vector fonts, LibreOffice, deprecated
> them in version 5.3, so that makes it a Fedora 26 change (6 releases ago)

LibreOffice is not Fedora's only font consumer - by far it is not. In fact, everything depending on pango/harfbuzz supported type1 up to and including Fedora 30. That is the whole point why users should be informed before the upgrade F30 -> F31.

Comment 7 Peng Wu 2019-12-05 08:30:41 UTC
Which Type 1 font should I try to convert?

Comment 8 Peng Wu 2019-12-06 08:39:35 UTC
Maybe makeotf from Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType is one option.

Comment 9 Akira TAGOH 2019-12-24 09:20:23 UTC
*** Bug 1785548 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10 Ben Cotton 2020-02-11 17:39:16 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 32 development cycle.
Changing version to 32.

Comment 11 Ben Cotton 2021-11-04 14:58:03 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 33 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 33 on 2021-11-30.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
Fedora 'version' of '33'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 33 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 12 Ben Cotton 2021-11-04 15:56:38 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 33 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 33 on 2021-11-30.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
Fedora 'version' of '33'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 33 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 13 Ben Cotton 2022-02-08 21:32:07 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 36 development cycle.
Changing version to 36.

Comment 14 Ben Cotton 2023-04-25 16:39:42 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora Linux 36 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora Linux 36 on 2023-05-16.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
'version' of '36'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora Linux version. Note that the version field may be hidden.
Click the "Show advanced fields" button if you do not see it.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora Linux 36 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora Linux, you are encouraged to change the 'version' to a later version
prior to this bug being closed.

Comment 15 Peng Wu 2023-04-26 04:01:10 UTC
Please consider to use the TrueType or OpenType version of the fonts.


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