[Bug 1866038] Re: By default install Noto fonts for Unicode ranges not already covered by default

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

As you can see in this discourse topic:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/let-selection-of-default-fonts-be-based-
on-noto/36923

we are about to install the fonts-noto-core package by default and make
Noto default throughout.

** Also affects: language-selector (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: fonts-noto (Ubuntu)
       Status: Confirmed => Invalid

** Changed in: language-selector (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => In Progress

** Changed in: language-selector (Ubuntu)
     Assignee: (unassigned) => Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1866038

Title:
  By default install Noto fonts for Unicode ranges not already covered
  by default

Status in fonts-noto package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in language-selector package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  There is currently movement towards protecting browser users from font
  fingerprinting. This means refusing, by default, to load user-
  installed fonts, which makes the set of fonts that each OS installs by
  default even more important than before.

  Firefox bug:
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1582687

  W3C CSS WG issue:
  https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/4497

  Currently, Windows 10, macOS, Android, Chrome OS, and, to a lesser
  extent, Fedora provide broader installed-by-default Unicode coverage
  than Ubuntu.

  Examples of living scripts that have enough active users to make it to
  the list at
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_systems#List_of_writing_scripts_by_adoption
  but are not supported by default in Eoan include Javanese, Sundanese,
  Batak, Balinese, Modern Yi, Mongolian, and New Tai Lue.

  Egyptian hieroglyphs is an example of a dead script the Eoan doesn't
  support but Windows 10, macOS, Chrome OS, and Android do support.

  To remedy this with minimal disk space impact, I suggest the same
  approach that Apple took. Apple bundles with macOS those Noto fonts
  that cover scripts that were not already covered by the previous
  installed-by-default set of fonts on macOS. In the macOS case, the on-
  disk footprint of the Noto fonts that were required to take macOS to
  Android/Chrome OS-competitive Unicode coverage was only a couple of
  megabytes. (The fonts are hidden in /Library/Application
  Support/Apple/Fonts/Language Support/.) In the case of Ubuntu, the set
  of Noto fonts required to reach the Chrome OS / Android level of
  script coverage is a bit larger than in the macOS case but should
  still be manageable.

  Please install, by default, those Noto fonts that provide support for
  scripts that are not properly supported by the fonts that Ubuntu
  already installs by default.

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