[tex-live] Conflits in gsfonts packge and tex-live distro

[Pander]

Martin Schröder wrote:
> 2009/5/20, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>:
>>  Thus, I regard the gsfonts as being broken.  At least they are not
> 
> Have you filed a bug with the Ghostscript maintainers
> (http://bugs.ghostscript.com)? They could at least fix this in future
> versions.
> 
> Best
>    Martin

Not yet, I also think about filing a bug for Ubuntu and Debian. My
opinion is that all extra stuff added by GNU/Linux distros in term of
extra characters should be committed upstream and only one archive of
(Ghostscript) gsfonts should be used by both texlive and GNU/Linux distros.

It is not good they clone the fonts without changeing the unique ID. But
if any effort is going to be made, I prefer merging over multiple
implementations with minor differences.

Whatever texlive of GNU/Linux distros might add to the archive of fonts
in terms of hinting files or which fonts they want to leave out is still
up to them.

Most important thing is that for all the end users, it should be
guaranteed (regarding gsfonts) that only one implementation is behind
each font name+style.

What is the most efficient way to handle this?

1) Contact Ghostscript upstream maintainer and get his/her opinion
2) Inform all downstream parties about approach (GNU/Linux gsfonts,
texlive, etc.)
3) Probably/hopefully have upstream Ghostscript merge the gsfonts
extension (extra characters etc.) from GNU/Linux gsfonts
4) Upgrade all downstream texlive, GNU/Linux gsfonts, etc.

Few, I have the feeling that these fonts that have been forked are going
to stir up a lot of dust for version and release management of some
distributions. Well, better now than later. The end result will be
serving more people around the world when the fonts offer more glyphs.

Regards,

Pander