Bug 27639

The problem with adding them to the iso images or installing them by
default is the size.

$ du -S /usr/share/fonts/google-noto*
300M    /usr/share/fonts/google-noto
1.8G    /usr/share/fonts/google-noto-cjk
8.1M    /usr/share/fonts/google-noto-emoji

With every font package installed (including the above)
$ du -s /usr/share/fonts
2.7G    /usr/share/fonts

$ du -s Mageia-8-beta1-*
3.9G    Mageia-8-beta1-i586
2.9G    Mageia-8-beta1-Live-GNOME-x86_64
3.3G    Mageia-8-beta1-Live-Plasma-x86_64
2.5G    Mageia-8-beta1-Live-Xfce-i586
2.7G    Mageia-8-beta1-Live-Xfce-x86_64
4.1G    Mageia-8-beta1-x86_64

If the other font packages are good enough to make installation possible, they
have to be kept available in the repos only, not on the iso images or installed
by default. Those who want them can install them. Putting them on the iso
images would require removing enough other packages to ensure the images can
still fit on a single sided dvd.

CC: (none) => davidwhodgins

Hi thanks requesting this.
As Dave has previous said, this is a question of ISO size.

I would suggest using netinstall ISO and when selecting hebrew as language could automatically install thèse requested fonts.

CC: (none) => ouaurelien

The displayed size in the website of Noto fonts is 1.1GB. Is there an option to replace a not-popular desktop with Noto fonts?

*The size of the extracted folder with the fonts only is 1.4GB.

Gnome or kde plasma? That's about the only way to free up over a GB of the
roughly 4 GB install iso images. Either would create a lot more complaints
than the current lack of the noto fonts during the install generates.

Not an option I'd recommend.

What about pre-install Noto Sans only? The size of Noto Sans only is 701.4MB.

We currently only install fonts that match the languages the user selects. I doubt many people would want the installer to automatically install extra fonts for scripts they can't read.

As far as ISO size is concerned, the situation isn't as bad as you think. The google-noto-cjk fonts are just rebranded versions of the Source Hans Sans fonts contained in the fonts-otf-source-hans package, which is the default font set selected for CJK languages. There is no point including the Google branded versions as well. With those excluded, the RPMs for the remaining google-noto- font packages total 113M. But that's still 113MB of bloat, and we are getting close to the 4.3G DVD limit.

I don't think we have fontconfig rules to prefer the noto fonts over others, so even if they were installed, the user would have to know about them and manually select them.

CC: (none) => mageia

The purpose of those iso images is to be able to install a system that is usable
enough to be able to then add additional packages from the online repositories.

I'm closing the bug as won't fix.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => WONTFIX

The Noto fonts are used for displaying the letters of the languages, and the fallback fonts do not display all the languages correctly. A font for displaying the languages correctly is needed to localize Mageia. Isn't there any way to add the fonts, even for the needed writing systems only?

DejaVu fonts are unmaintained now. Should this issue stay closed?
(See: https://github.com/dejavu-fonts/dejavu-fonts/issues/379)

Not being maintained is not a reason to drop a package. It must be unusable
or have security bugs to justify dropping or replacing.

The question is whether or not the fallback fonts just look bad (cosmetic
issue) or do they make the instructions unreadable in a way that makes
the iso images unusable?

If that latter, we could consider having google-noto-cjk pre-installed in the live and possibly netinstall iso images too, all of which are smaller than
classical installer iso images. With the released versions of the Mageia 8 iso
images ...
$ du -s Mageia-8-*/*.iso
4.1G    Mageia-8-i586/Mageia-8-i586.iso
3.0G    Mageia-8-Live-GNOME-x86_64/Mageia-8-Live-GNOME-x86_64.iso
3.4G    Mageia-8-Live-Plasma-x86_64/Mageia-8-Live-Plasma-x86_64.iso
2.6G    Mageia-8-Live-Xfce-i586/Mageia-8-Live-Xfce-i586.iso
2.8G    Mageia-8-Live-Xfce-x86_64/Mageia-8-Live-Xfce-x86_64.iso
4.2G    Mageia-8-x86_64/Mageia-8-x86_64.iso

Based on comment 7 I assume there would also be fontconfig rules changes
needed.

(In reply to Dave Hodgins from comment #11)
> Not being maintained is not a reason to drop a package. It must be unusable
> or have security bugs to justify dropping or replacing.
> 
> The question is whether or not the fallback fonts just look bad (cosmetic
> issue) or do they make the instructions unreadable in a way that makes
> the iso images unusable?
> 
> If that latter, we could consider having google-noto-cjk pre-installed in
> the live and possibly netinstall iso images too, all of which are smaller
> than
> classical installer iso images. With the released versions of the Mageia 8
> iso
> images ...
> $ du -s Mageia-8-*/*.iso
> 4.1G    Mageia-8-i586/Mageia-8-i586.iso
> 3.0G    Mageia-8-Live-GNOME-x86_64/Mageia-8-Live-GNOME-x86_64.iso
> 3.4G    Mageia-8-Live-Plasma-x86_64/Mageia-8-Live-Plasma-x86_64.iso
> 2.6G    Mageia-8-Live-Xfce-i586/Mageia-8-Live-Xfce-i586.iso
> 2.8G    Mageia-8-Live-Xfce-x86_64/Mageia-8-Live-Xfce-x86_64.iso
> 4.2G    Mageia-8-x86_64/Mageia-8-x86_64.iso
> 
> Based on comment 7 I assume there would also be fontconfig rules changes
> needed.
The fonts are readable, so this issue will stay closed (this question was not related to the looking of the font).

Noto CJK does not support most languages DejaVu fonts do (and DejaVu fonts do not support CJK), but it may be a good idea to add it to the installer.