[arch-general] pango 1:1.44-1 Renders Bitmap Fonts as Boxes.

[Eli Schwartz]

On 7/29/19 8:31 AM, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> It's worth keeping an eye on
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/issues/386 

Yep -- great issue to keep an eye on.

"I was told that you intentionally removed support for this, is that true?"

"Yes, that's why the blog post said so."

"Well, but what are the upstream developers of pango-based applications
supposed to do then?"

"Nothing, there is no replacement. Pango doesn't support bitmap fonts
anymore. Just like it said in the blog post."

"Are bitmap fonts deprecated?"

"..."

> If you look at the
> ‘History’ tab of https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63297 you'll see I
> asked for this link to be added to the issue but that was refused.
> The mentioned blog post, deemed sufficent, leaves the reader stranded.

Reading the linked issue will leave users just as stranded.

So, I guess I'm a bit curious why you're so dead set on adding a link to
the bug tracker. Do you know what a bug tracker is?

It's a place for, well, tracking bugs. For triaging them, filtering
based on their triage status, and discussing the efforts which have been
expended towards fixing them.

*There is no bug and nothing to fix. Pango does not support bitmap fonts
anymore, and nothing other than convincing upstream to change their
minds will make that stop being the case.*

Since this is *not* the first time you've had this issue, Ralph, I would
like to ask you: what is your divergent opinion on what a bugtracker is?

- A personal mechanism to pass notes addressed to Eli Schwartz? (That
  last reopen request...) Please use email instead... Submitting a
  reopen request with the sole effort of arguing with the Bug Wranglers
  about why "you're wrong" for repeatedly refusing to reopen it, is
  *not* a productive way to discuss the matter.
- A bulletin board for disseminating "vital" information to Arch users?
  If it's that important, we have a news feed.
- A place for users to get together and discuss migration options?
  That's what a forum is for.
- A place to collect all sorts of information on a subject, organize it
  into topics, index it for speedy access by users, and establish as the
  authoritative source for most of the Linux world to research,
  discover, and share information on the topic? It sounds like you've
  just described the famous Arch Wiki!

Why are you so supremely dead set on necromantically raising a dead
subject on the bugtracker, where it is difficult to find as well as
being offtopic, when you could write a whole thesis paper on the
subject, free of charge, on the wiki, and:

- get thanked
- have people ask you to write even more
- provide a resource that, even next year or next decade, will be easily
  found and receive lots of visibility with no need to search
- get a better page ranking in google while simultaneously raising the
  page ranking for the rest of the wiki

Why do you insist on hiding information in the bugtracker where only
Arch users today will find it, and Arch users tomorrow will *not* find
it, nor will Debian or Fedora or Slackware or XXXX users ever find it at
all (because they're not following recent Arch activity during the pango
release cycle, and by the time some stable distro gets the pango update,
everything has blown over).

Please devote your wonderful desire to help out and share knowledge, in
the recommended direction: improving the canonical documentation. :)

It would be great if you could add a troubleshooting section to the
Fonts article or something. If there was some sort of stable mechanism
for indexing the information, and allowing users to update and refine
their suggestions for living in a post-1.44 pango world, then I could
even be convinced that it's worth adding a note to the bugtracker to
that effect.

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

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