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Fnt: apt for fonts

github.com

89 pointsalexmyczko45 comments

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"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.

...unless you're not on a Debian-based distribution.

Then you won't have apt in the first place ;)

But you can have fnt, they support macOS too it seems

THIS is the main reason I wrote it.

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!

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, ...)

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.

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.

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

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 You'll need to read hundreds of pages of mostly out of date documentation.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.

Don't forget getting ridiculed for a "Useless Use of Cat"

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.

I believe they were talking in that comment about adding a new font to Debian.

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.

This tool just downloads .debs from sid:

https://github.com/alexmyczko/fnt/blob/c9204949ddf77e31fd519...

then it copies any fonts in them to a per-user directory. I don’t see any real benefit to debian users vs apt pinning (apt pinning supports auto update; fnt does not), but it does support installing to other operating systems, which is nice for those people.

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

not every linux or system has apt. not every user has root permissions. not every system has sudo.

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.

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.

Huh, so I bet someone could write a manager to handle that in a single command right?

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.

Not related, but fun fact: when iOS jailbreaks were popular, a primary vector was through an intentionally corrupted font file.

The 'fnt preview' mode is amazing, reminds me of watching music videos in the terminal with blc and aalib or calib in the 2000s (Ascii Art Library or Colour Ascii Art Library).. and then decreasing the font size to get a better resolution. Love it.

I really like this idea. Seems almost crazy that it hasn't been done before

like.. actually using apt for fonts?

and for that matter, brew on mac

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.

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.

fontmatrix has dis- and enabling fonts feature. good idea, I will consider this.

> Once you start accumulating all the fonts you needed over projects, your Inkscape and Gimp become terribly sluggish on booting.

Isn't this an old Windows bug, where GIMP would recreate the font cache on every start? I don't think I've ever seen any noticeable delay on Linux. (I have hundreds to thousands of fonts installed.)

It is most notable in Inkscape.

It boots fast, but many menu's and buttons will stall for seconds or longer while fonts are being loaded. There may be an issue for this in some bugtracker, I have not checked this yet.

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.

Whats not great about chucking them in ~/.fonts and done? I can't think of how it could be easier?

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...

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...

You can't find and install new fonts using Fontbook, can you?

...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.

just replace chafa with open (macos) or feh (linux) and get a nice preview.

the linux equivalent to open is xdg-open

that is what freedesktop.org thinks. i prefer gopen. anyone is free to use what them like...

Or, even better, https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask-fonts

1. No GUI needed

2. Discoverable and searchable directly through Brew

No preview, but yeah, see issues about why it didn't cut it for me.

We seriously need a package manager for package managers, and I'm not even joking.

I think we need less pakage managers, and more cooperation between them. I mean all the resources wasted, look at repology.org...

There you go: https://asdf-vm.com/

Doesn't support fnt yet, but after this post I give it a week or so.

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