[upstream] [hardy] openoffice uses proprietary (non-free) fonts by default

There is a bug filed in OOo bugtracker: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=10866
but they argue that Times is de facto academic and corporate standard :/

i have a question here: if a document is set to use e.g. times and times is not installed. is openoffice trying to find a substitute or is the font system responsible?

in any way the user has to be informed that a font is not installed.
just by randomly finding this bug report i realized why some of my documents were looking different. which i had thought was related to the new version of OOo.

if its an OOo issue i will post it upstream.

thx

Any chances to fix this for Hardy?

Upstream appears to default to DejaVu Serif now, regardless of the upstream bug report status...

I've actually found that my system, both Gutsy and Hardy alpha 6, use a combination of Nimbus_Sans and Albany (which is not even available for Ubuntu except as a purchase direct from the company) as de facto defaults. The use of Albany for the font in graphs persists even after changing all default fonts to something reasonable. This is a major pain, as do not have the font and have to reconfigure every single plot (which is partly OOo's fault for not offering the ability to change more of the chart defaults). This is in parallel with the original poster's observations.

This bug was fixed in the package openoffice.org - 1:2.4.0-3ubuntu1

---------------
openoffice.org (1:2.4.0-3ubuntu1) hardy; urgency=low

  [ Chris Cheney ]
  * Resynchronise with Debian (r1044). Remaining changes:
    - debian/broffice.org.postrm.in:
      . Change diversions to ubuntu bitmap filenames.
    - debian/broffice.org.preinst.in:
      . Change diversions to ubuntu bitmap filenames.
    - debian/control.in:
      . Change maintainer line.
      . Use imagemagick instead of graphicsmagick.
      . Change bzr repo location.
      . Add package openoffice.org-style-human.
      . Add replaces openoffice.org-gtk (<< 2.0.3-1) for openoffice.org-gnome
        dapper upgrade.
    - debian/control.l10n.in:
      . Add file for Ubuntu.
    - debian/control.lang.in:
      . Add L10N_COMMON to Depends.
    - debian/control.mozilla.in:
      . Add Xb-Npp-xxx tags according to "firefox distro add-on suport" spec.
    - debian/control.ubuntu-feisty.in:
      . Add file for Ubuntu.
    - debian/deppackage.postinst.in:
      . Add file for Ubuntu.
    - debian/module-po.map:
      . Add file for Ubuntu.
    - debian/ooo-build-ubuntu.diff:
      . Various Ubuntu specific changes to ooo-build.
    - debian/openoffice.org-base.mime:
      . Update and sort mime-types.
    - debian/openoffice.org-calc.mime:
      . Update and sort mime-types.
    - debian/openoffice.org-draw.mime:
      . Update and sort mime-types.
    - debian/openoffice.org-filter-binfilter.mime:
      . Update and sort mime-types.
    - debian/openoffice.org-impress.mime:
      . Update and sort mime-types.
    - debian/openoffice.org-math.mime:
      . Update and sort mime-types.
    - debian/openoffice.org-writer.mime:
      . Update and sort mime-types.
    - debian/rules:
      . Add BUILD_SPARC option.
      . Add USE_COMMON_DOCDIR option.
      . Add USE_LZMA_COMPRESS option.
      . Add support to build on lpia.
      . Add support to build l10n as a separate source.
      . Add support to chmod +x programs in debian dir.
      . Add support to uuencode binary files in ubuntu dir.
      . Add support for Ubuntu specific bitmaps.
      . Add support for openoffice.org-style-human package.
      . Add support for launchpad translations.
      . Update location of aotcompile.py file.
      . Use imagemagick instead of graphicsmagick.
      . Use openjdk-6-jre instead of icedtea-java7-jre. Closes LP: #203636
      . Various Ubuntu specific changes.
    - debian/scripts/convert2po:
      . Add file for Ubuntu.
    - debian/scripts/fix_image_rgb:
      . Use imagemagick instead of graphicsmagick.
    - debian/scripts/gsifilter.py:
      . Add file for Ubuntu.
    - debian/scripts/splitgsi:
      . Add file for Ubuntu.
    - debian/template.desktop.in:
      . Add NoDisplay=true.
  * Resynchronise with ooo-build (r12081).
    - Closes LP: #54776, #62256, #105906, #113358, #131272, #137469, #138252
      Closes LP: #148552, #154940, #160988, #175983, #194759, #197451, #197622
  * ubuntu/*:
    - Update splash screen for OOo 2.4. Closes LP: #199193
    - Various Ubuntu specific changes.

  [ Matthias Klose ]
  * ubuntu/lpi2gsi: Add templates and conversion scripts to generate
    ...

While some of the default fonts now default to non-proprietary ones, that's not true of all of them for 2.4 in Hardy. I still get Albany as the default font for all plots, regardless of any configuration options.

Based on upstream bug reports, it appears the remaining font issues have been fixed for OO 3.0 (e.g., http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=85934).

10866 is not really the bug that we deal with here, and it is virtually closed. 85934 is what we need and it has been fixed upstream.

There are much better free fonts on dafont.com

Perspective sans

Times Sans Serif

Typo 3

and the Liberation Series

Are very good free fonts that should be used by default instead.

These fonts are nice but they're not all created by professionals; this means they can be prone to problems and should be tested very carefully first, and they may not all be easy to read for long texts. And although they're free of charge, the license of some is not clear. About the Liberation Fonts, which are of high quality, the GPL-exception license is said to be invalid by the FSF and Debian (and us?) and for now are considered as non-free - hope this will be solved.

This idea should be reported to upstream or discussed only for Ubuntu on ubuntu-devel-discuss if you want something to happen, here we won't change anything.

On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 12:40:11AM -0000, Redrazor39 wrote:
> There are much better free fonts on dafont.com
> Perspective sans
> Times Sans Serif
> Typo 3
> and the Liberation Series
>
> Are very good free fonts that should be used by default instead.

Has these fonts European and other countries letters ?
AFAIK Liberation fonts supports only ASCII and ISO-8859-1 characters,
but these characters are used by less than 20% of people in the world,
lots of European people (like Polish, Greek, Russians, Lithuanians, etc)
needs more letters...

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