Don't depend on msttcorefonts

Except that several themes have a font face of "Arial" :)

see /usr/share/mythtv/themes/blue/ui.xml for an example. You take
msttcorefonts out of the mix, and suddenly you dont get text in many themes.

That's would be a reason for mythtv-themes to depend, wouldn't it? And it should be trivial to symlink Arial (etc.) to something else instead, as a 'fake-msttcorefonts' sort of package.

It'd be nice to not require msttcorefonts, surely the mythtv-themes could be patched? Or a package to fake msttcorefonts so it uses similar but free alternatives?

I'd be open to patching all packages to use similar, free alternatives.
Currently, most themes use:
<font name="title" face="Arial">
<font name="title" face="Verdana">
<font name="active" face="Trebuchet MS">
while a few use FreeSans and a few other fonts.
Perhaps a better solution is to set a sort of fallback option should these
fonts not be installed.

I wonder why the theme designers went for the microsoft fonts in the first place, when there are plenty of free alternatives out there. Are you aware if the frontend is capable of having alternative fonts in the themes or if it will need patched for that?

Either way, adding alternative fonts as a fallback or using free fonts in the first place, its probably a good idea.

I have seen some cases that it does fallback to free fonts if these aren't
available, but no definitive answer as to when. As soon its figured out
what causes the free font fall back to work / not work, we can fix up this
bug.

Daviey is going to look into possibilities of creating a fake-msttcorefonts

That would be a good option, as it would be a useable substitution across other packages that require msttcorefonts. Also it would mean future or unpatched themes for mythtv would still function correctly.

Just a quick update:

Redhat has made some fonts that are metrically identical to the usable (ie not Webdings) msttcorefonts. I have submitted a package of these to the repository universe reviewers (but I understand Debian is also working on packaging it - but have a concern about the licence they have released them under).

Once this is ironed out - a fake-msttcorefonts package will be fairly straightforward.

mythtv (0.20-svn20070523-0.0ubuntu1) gutsy; urgency=low

  [ Mario Limonciello ]
  * Merge with debian multimedia:
    o New SVN release. (last change is 13496)
    o Rename libmyth0.20-dev to libmyth-dev .
  * Remaining changes:
    o Drop 21_changeset12782_hd_homerun as its included in 13496.
    o Make ubuntu-mythtv-frontend depend on mythbuntu-artwork-usplash
      rather than the ubuntu artwork if available.
    o Create mythtv-transcode-utils (LP: #92703)
    o FE & BE depend on either fake-msttcorefonts or msttcorefonts. (LP: #110068)
    o Bump debian/compat to 5.
    o Add an option to /etc/mythtv/session-settings for controlling
      if mythwelcome is used or mythfrontend.
    o Add "ntp |" to all ntp-simple depends. (LP: 118705)
    o Add update-notifier to mythtv-database depends (LP: # 109950)

  [ Nick Fox ]
  * Add gnome-power-manager to startmythtv.sh script if installed
    to properly control DPMS.

 -- Mario Limonciello <email address hidden> Tue, 05 June 2007 12:26:31 -0500