Font package guidelines: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 13:23, 3 April 2024

Arch package guidelines

32-bit – CLR – CMake – Cross – DKMS – Eclipse – Electron – Font – Free Pascal – GNOME – Go – Haskell – Java – KDE – Kernel – Lisp – Meson – MinGW – Node.js – Nonfree – OCaml – Perl – PHP – Python – R – Ruby – Rust – Shell – VCS – Web – Wine

This document covers proposed standards and guidelines on writing PKGBUILDs for Fonts.

General guidelines

Package naming

TTF fonts: ttf-fontname
OTF fonts: otf-fontname

If the font is a variable font, add the suffix -variable.

Note: The package name should be entirely lowercase.

Package description

The package description should at least contain the word font and what type of font it is: sans-serif, serif or monospace.

Architecture

Fonts are architecture-independent. Use arch=(any).

Dependencies

Fonts do not depend on anything. Many packages in the repositories, however, include fontconfig and xorg-mkfontscale as dependecies. Those were required when font packages needed to use install scripts to update the font cache – a lot of duplicate work now done by pacman hooks. If you install fontconfig or xorg-mkfontscale, all existing fonts in /usr/share/fonts/ will be cached making it unnecessary to force people to use fontconfig or mkfontscale.

Provides

Many applications rely on the virtual package ttf-font. If your font family meets the criteria, add provides=('ttf-font').

Source

See whether a font is available from the following sources in this order:

a code hosting platform like GitHub or an official website
github.com/google/fonts (you should download individual files instead of cloning the repository, see ttf-roboto-mono for an example)
Font Squirrel, Font Library, FFonts, 1001 Fonts, 1001 Free Fonts, DaFont

The following sites are not recommended:

fonts.google.com (it no longer provides stable download URLs)
FontSpace (checksums change for unknown reasons)

Package

The following snippet is an example for an OTF font released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 with Reserved Font Name:

license=('OFL-1.1-RFN')
...
package() {
  install -Dm644 -t "$pkgdir/usr/share/fonts/OTF" "path/to/font/*.otf"
  install -Dm644 -t "$pkgdir/usr/share/licenses/$pkgname" "path/to/license/OFL.txt"
}

The OFL is technically a custom license, so each font package's license file needs to be installed under /usr/share/licenses/$pkgname.
If the font contains many font files, consider using $pkgname instead of OTF for the destination directory.

Example packages

ttf-merriweather-sans^AUR
otf-commissioner^AUR – split package with OTF, TTF and variable version

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 [[ja:フォントパッケージガイドライン]]
 [[pt:Font package guidelines]]
+[[zh-hans:Font package guidelines]]
 {{Package guidelines}}
@@ Line 38: / Line 39: @@
 * a code hosting platform like GitHub or an official website
-* [https://fonts.google.com Google Fonts]: {{ic|<nowiki>https://fonts.google.com/download?family=</nowiki>''Name''}}
+* [https://github.com/google/fonts github.com/google/fonts] (you should download individual files instead of cloning the repository, see [https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/ttf-roboto-mono/-/blob/34918d39c7f09abc9ac2f2324fba029c7396e693/PKGBUILD ttf-roboto-mono] for an example)
 * [https://www.fontsquirrel.com Font Squirrel], [https://fontlibrary.org Font Library], [https://www.ffonts.net FFonts], [https://www.1001freefonts.com 1001 Fonts], [https://www.1001freefonts.com 1001 Free Fonts], [https://www.dafont.com DaFont]
 The following sites are not recommended:
+* [https://fonts.google.com fonts.google.com] (it [https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/7481 no longer provides stable download URLs])
 * [https://www.fontspace.com FontSpace] (checksums change for unknown reasons)
 == Package ==
-The following snippet is an example for an OTF font released under the OFL (SIL Open Font License):
+The following snippet is an example for an OTF font released under the [https://spdx.org/licenses/OFL-1.1-RFN.html SIL Open Font License 1.1 with Reserved Font Name]:
 {{bc|<nowiki>
-license=('OFL')
+license=('OFL-1.1-RFN')
 ...
 package() {