QA is asking that we unpush abattis-cantarell-fonts update from F28 updates-testing: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-c69ab4d656
I don't want to make the decision on my own and would like Workstation WG opinion on this, as it's one of the major new features in GNOME 3.28.
Reasoning from the Bodhi update ticket (seems valid to me):
I don't think we should push this. It clearly looks significantly worse than 0.0.25 we had before. There are many issues with the spacing between glyphs in words, and between words. There are also issues with vertical positioning of glyphs and words in a few cases. I have posted more details to the desktop list. I think we should stick with 0.0.25 for F28 unless the new series is cleared up so it's at least arguably approximately equal in quality, I don't think it's anywhere close to that yet. The author acknowledged these issues on IRC: (madigens[m]) adamw: thanks for the feedback :) cantarell's spacing does indeed look a bit funky... in gtk3 and firefox. that's due to a missing technical detail called "subpixel positioning". Spacing looks more consistent in Qt apps and Chrome. there also isn't any kerning yet, so things like AVA, To, etc. look gap-y Of course, most of GNOME is "gtk3", and Firefox is the default Workstation browser.
I don't think we should push this. It clearly looks significantly worse than 0.0.25 we had before. There are many issues with the spacing between glyphs in words, and between words. There are also issues with vertical positioning of glyphs and words in a few cases. I have posted more details to the desktop list.
I think we should stick with 0.0.25 for F28 unless the new series is cleared up so it's at least arguably approximately equal in quality, I don't think it's anywhere close to that yet.
The author acknowledged these issues on IRC:
(madigens[m]) adamw: thanks for the feedback :) cantarell's spacing does indeed look a bit funky... in gtk3 and firefox. that's due to a missing technical detail called "subpixel positioning". Spacing looks more consistent in Qt apps and Chrome. there also isn't any kerning yet, so things like AVA, To, etc. look gap-y
Of course, most of GNOME is "gtk3", and Firefox is the default Workstation browser.
I'd encourage folks to simply install the updated font and try it for a while, and decide on that basis. Even if you're on F27, I haven't checked, but can't think of any reason why the package shouldn't install fine on F27, and of course we could do a scratch build in Koji if necessary. I got the update from updates-testing for a few hours and it looked clearly, significantly worse to me in normal use, but it's possible you all will have a different opinion :)
edit: BTW, bureaucratic note: it's not really 'QA' asking for this. It's just 'me'. I'm not speaking for anyone else here, we haven't discussed this as a group at all.
Metadata Update from @pfrields: - Issue tagged with: meeting
Metadata Update from @pfrields: - Issue assigned to kalev
From today's WG meeting:
Unpushed from F28 updates-testing.
Metadata Update from @kalev: - Issue untagged with: meeting - Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)
Personally I don't understand how it "clearly looks significantly worse" and that evaluation stops Fedora form shipping an upstream font.
As the one responsible for the terrible non-systemic invasions into Cantarell in the past I would say it "clearly looks significantly better" in terms of metrics. So shipping the old version botched by an amateur, I recommend updating.
It was only for F28. The new version is already in F29 (and as things stand now, looks fine). It didn't "stop Fedora from shipping an upstream font"; it delayed us shipping a new version of something. This is pretty common thing for a distribution to do (delay landing a new version of something until, in the distro's judgement, it's ready).
Upstream issue: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/cantarell-fonts/issues/22
If someone could comment on the upstream issue, ideally with screenshots of the issue, that would be really helpful. Before and after screenshots would be best.
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