[HN Gopher] Fnt: apt for fonts
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Fnt: apt for fonts
Author : alexmyczko
Score : 71 points
Date : 2021-02-08 13:14 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| dsr_ wrote:
| "apt for fonts" is called apt.
|
| If you want the testing fonts, you add:
|
| /etc/apt/sources.d/fonts.list:
|
| deb http://http.debian.net/debian sid main contrib non-free
|
| and
|
| /etc/apt/preferences.d/pinning:
|
| Package: fonts-* Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 600
|
| (priority between 500 and 989 means "causes a version to be
| installed unless there is a version available belonging to the
| target release or the installed version is more recent")
|
| and after you apt update, you have access to sid.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Maybe the problem is that there's no equivalent of the AUR for
| Debian-based repos, and/or that packaging for Debian is a
| serious pain the ass.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| ...unless you're not on a Debian-based distribution.
| G4E wrote:
| Then you won't have apt in the first place ;)
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| But you can have fnt, they support macOS too it seems
| alexmyczko wrote:
| THIS is the main reason I wrote it.
| mikewhy wrote:
| Yes why use this simple tool when you can:
|
| 1. add a limited set of fonts (requires sudo privileges)
|
| 2. pin those using an arbitrary number between two more
| arbitrary numbers, hope it doesn't break anything else. if it
| does break I'm sure there's a few pages of documentation you
| can sift through (also requires sudo privileges)
|
| 3. run another sudo command to update your local list of
| available packages
|
| 4. finally, use sudo to install your font
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| And god help you if you'd like to add a font. You'll need to
| read hundreds of pages of mostly out of date documentation.
| Then track down brusque gatekeepers on IRC and obscure
| communication channels to plead your case, only to be mocked
| and told simply, "No." You will be told it's not "the Debian
| way" and hundreds of pages of more documentation will be
| thrown at you. Almost certainly someone will quiz you on your
| knowledge of obscure 90's unix minutia and the writings of
| Eric S. Raymond. And once you pass that gauntlet your font
| might be accepted in a few months, at which time it's already
| way out of date and you start the whole process over again.
| ramses0 wrote:
| Don't forget getting ridiculed for a "Useless Use of Cat"
| dsr_ wrote:
| Pretty sure I just wrote out all the steps for you.
|
| I'm glad I could save you from that nightmare. Next time
| try posting to the debian-users mailing list, we hardly
| ever mock anyone.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I believe they were talking in that comment about adding
| a new font _to_ Debian.
| dsr_ wrote:
| It seems unlikely to be that difficult, given that there
| are
|
| apt search "font"|grep fonts-|wc -l
|
| roughly 600 font families packaged in the Debian
| repositories right now.
| tazard wrote:
| While I agree this looks like a nice simple tool for managing
| fonts, bringing up the differences between it and apt is
| hardly an argument for how this is the "apt for fonts".
|
| I'm not the target user here since I'm usually happy enough
| with whatever font is available by default from apt, but that
| makes this tool (as nice as I'm sure it is for the intended
| users):
|
| 1. Install new package manager for a special category of
| packages
|
| 2. Learn/use different syntax for
| installing/searching/updating/removing
|
| 3. Remember in 6 months I even installed this thing, when I
| feel like a font change
| alexmyczko wrote:
| not every linux or system has apt. not every user has root
| permissions. not every system has sudo.
| mikewhy wrote:
| Yes, exactly. I think we're saying the same thing: the
| submitted tool doesn't need apt or any sort of root
| permissions. While the instructions the parent posted
| required root, apt, knowledge of pinning, and acceptance of
| any issues that brings up.
|
| Much more complicated than just installing a font.
| dsr_ wrote:
| You don't need sudo for any of this.
|
| You do need root privileges if you want to install font
| packages so that everyone on the system can use them. If you
| only have yourself as a user, you can just drop ttf or otf
| files in an appropriate $HOME subdir.
|
| You can also build yourself a read-only disk image and run
| overlay, or run NIXos, or guix, or whatever. I find it
| baffling that you find it desirable to sneer at instructions
| on how to do things appropriately for the specific system
| that is being referenced.
|
| Hopefully other people will find some value in what I wrote.
| netizen-9748 wrote:
| Huh, so I bet someone could write a manager to handle that
| in a single command right?
| progval wrote:
| And fnt has little to do with apt; it's a wrapper around curl +
| ar + tar, that doesn't support any of the important features of
| APT (signature checking, dependencies, updates, keeping track
| of what is installed, uninstalls, ...)
| alexmyczko wrote:
| that is true. but everyone knows apt, so if you want to
| explain something similar in usage, i'd refer to something
| people know about. of course your description: "wrapper
| around curl/ar/tar" is on point, but would anyone have
| understood it? the missing important features are a good
| idea.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| To me, "apt for fonts" is something similar to apt, but
| centered around and specialized in fonts. Like, say, eprairie,
| the "ebay for bison" - I can list those rare bison I need to
| get rid of on ebay, but people won't be able to search for horn
| curvature, but I expect eprairie will have that.
|
| Good to know there are some fonts on apt, though!
| francis-io wrote:
| Managing fonts is not great on Linux in general. I'll make sure I
| give this a go.
|
| A good font can make a big difference if you are in the terminal
| or editor all day. It's a pain to get unity between them though.
| brnt wrote:
| Whats not great about chucking them in ~/.fonts and done? I
| can't think of how it could be easier?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| It's not too bad on modern Ubuntu-based variants in my
| experience. There's a font manager GUI that lets you drag and
| drop add stuff, one click install font, etc. like on Windows.
| You can also just copy ttf or other files into your ~/.fonts
| for your user and they work fine too (I like this since you can
| just sync and backup your fonts across all your machines).
|
| The real mess, sadly, is configuring all your apps and such to
| use different fonts. There are an unbelievable amount of
| obscure configs, tweak tools, etc. if you want to change system
| fonts.
| berkes wrote:
| Once you start accumulating all the fonts you needed over
| projects, your Inkscape and Gimp become terribly sluggish on
| booting. Other programs maybe too, I don't know, I don't use
| that many graphical tools or office programs.
|
| And the font-selector dropdowns become unusable.
|
| So I started manually moving stuff from /usr/share/fonts/ and
| ./.local/share/fonts/ into per-project archive folders. A lot
| of work, that a font-manager could easily do much better.
| Worse: manually moving stuff from /usr/share/fonts/ can and
| will bring them back "unexpected" on updates or reinstallation
| - though there are probably hardly ever updates for font
| packages.
|
| I would love a tool like fnt to manage this for me, but it
| seems fnt is more for installing and less for "dis- and
| enabling" them per theme/project etc.
| alexmyczko wrote:
| fontmatrix has dis- and enabling fonts feature. good idea, I
| will consider this.
| caiob wrote:
| How's this different than say
| https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask-fonts on a Mac?
| alexmyczko wrote:
| You want the latest and greated fonts from Debian sid? Now you
| can! No matter if you're on some strange Linux distribution or
| some macOS! Single shell script for the rescue...
| amirmasoudabdol wrote:
| Homebrew on macOS supports fonts through 'cask'. I'm not sure
| about Linux but since they run on Linux these days, I'd not
| wonder if they have that covered as well.
| revel wrote:
| I really like this idea. Seems almost crazy that it hasn't been
| done before
| rovr138 wrote:
| like.. actually using apt for fonts?
|
| and for that matter, brew on mac
| rememberlenny wrote:
| Not related, but fun fact: when iOS jailbreaks were popular, a
| primary vector was through an intentionally corrupted font file.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| We seriously need a package manager for package managers, and I'm
| not even joking.
| viraptor wrote:
| There you go: https://asdf-vm.com/
|
| Doesn't support fnt yet, but after this post I give it a week
| or so.
| alexmyczko wrote:
| I think we need less pakage managers, and more cooperation
| between them. I mean all the resources wasted, look at
| repology.org...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| If you're on macOS, I can't say I really see the advantage to
| this over using the built-in Fontbook. Perhaps if you manage a
| lot of machines...
| igneo676 wrote:
| Or, even better, https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask-
| fonts
|
| 1. No GUI needed
|
| 2. Discoverable and searchable directly through Brew
| alexmyczko wrote:
| No preview, but yeah, see issues about why it didn't cut it
| for me.
| anamexis wrote:
| You can't find and install new fonts using Fontbook, can you?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| ...Oh, I get it now. (You _can_ install new fonts, just not
| find them.)
|
| It's just, I personally can't imagine installing a new font
| without actually looking at it first. I know this provides an
| ascii art preview, but I'd need a more precise rendering.
| alexmyczko wrote:
| just replace chafa with open (macos) or feh (linux) and get
| a nice preview.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| the linux equivalent to open is xdg-open
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