Libertinus: Re-triage of closed issues

Created on 7 Jul 2020 · 6Comments · Source: alerque/libertinus

Since this font has a new maintainer, it would be good, that is if @alerque agrees, to reopen many closed font issues (originally, they were closed because Khaled didn't have an impetus to fix them).

What do you think?

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aksr

👍2

Most helpful comment

Yes and no. Here's my thoughts on that.

I don't have _that_ much more impetus that Khaled, and am at the added disadvantage of not being a font designer! Khaled was (and is) good at that. This is actually only the _second_ most used font in my personal collection, the first being Hack — which says something about the end of the spectrum I'm coming from.

I am willing to approach issue management a bit differently. He took kind of an inbox zero approach where if he didn't have plans to fix it right away he'd close them. Fair enough. I'm currently sitting on an inbox with (I kid you not) 28,942 unread messages and 70 unfinished drafts. I think that qualifies me for being over-extended as a way of life.

There are a bunch of issues labeled wontfix that I think we can re-evaluate. It seems to me the tag was used for two things and could be split up:

Some of them were marked that way because they were bad ideas that _should not_ be implemented. They just wouldn't make good sense for this project or they represent preferences that the designer doesn't share. For the most part I hope to make roughly the similar choices design wise to the pattern Khaled made. Anybody hoping for a design revolution is likely to be disappointed in my work.
On the other hand it seems like the tag also got used for things which might be perfectly rational design choices, just add glyphs, etc. These were closed simply because Khaled didn't have a personal interest in sinking the time into making them happen but he would have been happy to accept PRs if somebody else was willing to do the work.

I'm also not in a position to sink a bunch of time into extending the font, but I am willing to take contributions and shepherd them a bit to bring it all together. I think the closed issues particularly in the wontfix tag need to be evaluated again: some of them should stay closed as wontfix because I would reject PRs even if they happened, and the other half should be re-tagged perhaps with some nice way of labeling them "sure but fix it yourself", then re-opened. Maybe "help wanted" or something to that effect.

Before we tackle that issue sorting, let me work out the build system to the point where I'm ready to accept PRs. Right now even if somebody did contribute I don't have a local workflow setup for evaluating contributions! Once I have that in gear, then I'll be willing to re-open any issues that look like something I would be willing to accept PRs for. At that point I'd love the help triaging the old closed issues in the form of comments suggesting which ones might be good candidates for re-open — or even if you or others are interested I can add collaborators that can help with that directly.

alerque on 7 Jul 2020

👍6

All 6 comments

Yes and no. Here's my thoughts on that.

There are a bunch of issues labeled wontfix that I think we can re-evaluate. It seems to me the tag was used for two things and could be split up:

Some of them were marked that way because they were bad ideas that _should not_ be implemented. They just wouldn't make good sense for this project or they represent preferences that the designer doesn't share. For the most part I hope to make roughly the similar choices design wise to the pattern Khaled made. Anybody hoping for a design revolution is likely to be disappointed in my work.
On the other hand it seems like the tag also got used for things which might be perfectly rational design choices, just add glyphs, etc. These were closed simply because Khaled didn't have a personal interest in sinking the time into making them happen but he would have been happy to accept PRs if somebody else was willing to do the work.

alerque on 7 Jul 2020

👍6

Fair enough.

aksr on 7 Jul 2020

@alerque Just got notification of this Documentation Foundation "bug" (more like enhancement request) (although "bug" enters into it!) which involved Libertinus. Thought you might be interested to know of it.

dajare on 16 Aug 2020

Thanks for the heads up on that @dajare, I just dropped a note there. It's kind of a long shot because it would be a massive transition effort, but it would be cool to see happen and certainly and improvement for everybody (I can still say that without a caveat because I haven't changed a single jot or tittle in the font itself yet).

alerque on 19 Aug 2020

👍1

By the way for anyone following this issue waiting until I was ready to accept PRs, that time has come. There are still a few hiccups and a lot of things I'd like to do to ease the process of contributing to open source fonts, but that is work for Fontship. As for this project I have the repo filtering done and the build system revised to the point where I'd be able to accept the changes easily enough if somebody comes along and fiddles with sources in FontForge and posts a PR.

As such, it's also time we could re-triage old issues. In particular as mentioned above there are lots of issues closed as wontfix, some of which can stay that way and some of which could be reopened with a help wanted label instead.

If you have a favorite issue you want to see revived please feel free to comment with your take on it for re-evaluation. Also if any previous contributors (to sources or issues) wants to help with broader triage past a couple issues I'd be happy to grant some access so you can operate on the issues directly, just comment here to that effect.

alerque on 26 Aug 2020

🎉3

there are lots of issues closed as _wontfix_, some of which can stay that way and some of which could be reopened with a help wanted label instead.

Note that there are a couple issues that are labeled with both "help wanted" and "wontfix". Not sure if that's deliberate or an overlook. If the former, they would be prime candidates for reopening.