Update font tooling to support semi-bold font weight #11976

rtibbles · 2024-03-09T23:25:41Z

Summary

Updates fontTools library to the latest version, and enforce Python version at a module level in the Python aspects of the i18n module
Updates our font tooling to use the new repository https://github.com/notofonts/notofonts.github.io as the old one has been archived
Updates our font tooling to either download SemiBold weights, or in the case where they are unavailable, use variable versions to generate the missing font weight (or weights).
Note that this means that some of our fonts will be unhinted, whereas until now all our fonts are hinted.
Preference is given to downloading the slimline version of the variable fonts (as we do not need variation in font width) but it falls back to the full variable font if not available.
Adds the ability to exclude specific typefaces that would otherwise be bundled based on our 'weights are available' criteria - does so with the NotoSansTest font which is not needed and is only for testing.
Excludes fonts that are only used for ancient texts, or have incredibly limited usage.
Adds some specific exclusions for fonts used during font subsetting - these fonts seemed to cause errors during font subsetting that I could not resolve, and as they are not used in UI text, it seemed simplest to exclude them from the subsetting code.

Reviewer guidance

In the future we may want to be explicit about which typefaces we want to include in the font subsetting code - although, with the dropping of IE11 support in the future, it's possible we can stop doing the subsetting altogether.

Opening this as a draft for now, to make sure that everything builds, check the size of the built WHL file, and also open it up for QA testing to make sure fonts are still behaving as expected.

Testing checklist

Contributor has fully tested the PR manually
If there are any front-end changes, before/after screenshots are included
Critical user journeys are covered by Gherkin stories
Critical and brittle code paths are covered by unit tests

PR process

PR has the correct target branch and milestone
PR has 'needs review' or 'work-in-progress' label
If PR is ready for review, a reviewer has been added. (Don't use 'Assignees')
If this is an important user-facing change, PR or related issue has a 'changelog' label
If this includes an internal dependency change, a link to the diff is provided

Reviewer checklist

Automated test coverage is satisfactory
PR is fully functional
PR has been tested for accessibility regressions
External dependency files were updated if necessary (yarn and pip)
Documentation is updated
Contributor is in AUTHORS.md

Enforce Python 3.8 for font tooling.

Add flexibility to use variable fonts to fill in missing font weights.

github-actions · 2024-03-09T23:58:43Z

Build Artifacts

Asset type	Download link
PEX file	kolibri-0.16.1.dev0_git.20240310055504.pex
Windows Installer (EXE)	kolibri-0.16.1.dev0+git.20240310055504-unsigned.exe
Debian Package	kolibri_0.16.1.dev0+git.20240310055504-0ubuntu1_all.deb
Mac Installer (DMG)	kolibri-0.16.1.dev0+git.20240310055504-0.4.0.dmg
Android Package (APK)	kolibri-0.16.1.dev0+git.20240310055504-0.1.0-debug.apk
TAR file	kolibri-0.16.1.dev0+git.20240310055504.tar.gz
WHL file	kolibri-0.16.1.dev0+git.20240310055504-py2.py3-none-any.whl

radinamatic · 2024-03-11T09:38:02Z

Tested the DEB asset in Firefox and Chrome on Ubuntu 20.04, and checked the loading of all 32 locales in Kolibri. No issues noticed neither in the UI font display, nor in the network tab and console regarding the subsets loading.

This newest DEB is 81.7 MB compared to 75.3 MB of 0.16.0 release.

@pcenov can you please test the EXE and DMG assets? Thank you!

pcenov · 2024-03-11T15:49:01Z

Hi @radinamatic no fonts related issues observed while testing with the .deb and .exe builds as well.

radinamatic

Manual QA passes, should be good to go after the code review! 🙂

nucleogenesis

I think I got a good grasp of what was going on in the code and the changes made sense and made for a clean grokkable read.

Just left a non-blocking question

nucleogenesis · 2024-03-12T20:37:32Z

packages/kolibri-tools/lib/i18n/fonts.py

+except ImportError:
+    utils.install_requirement(f"fonttools=={font_tools_version}")
+except AssertionError:
+    utils.install_requirement(f"fonttools=={font_tools_version}")
+    logging.error(
+        "Wrong fontTools version was installed. This has been updated. Please re-run the command."
+    )
+    sys.exit(1)


Why do we notify that we've updated fontTools on one type of error but not the other?

The assertion error only happens in the case that fontTools was already installed. Unfortunately, because we already imported it, we have to exit Python before we can import the updated version (although, now I think about it, it might be possible to clear the module cache - but generally safer to quit). When the import didn't even succeed, we can reimport again.

marcellamaki

Blocking merge into 0.16.x until we are ready for all branding to be merged

Ready to merge!

rtibbles added 3 commits March 9, 2024 15:08

Update fonttools to latest version.

2a38534

Enforce Python 3.8 for font tooling.

Update font tooling to add support for Semi-Bold fonts.

acede24

Add flexibility to use variable fonts to fill in missing font weights.

Update existing fonts for SemiBold and add new fonts.

014db6c

github-actions bot added DEV: backend Python, databases, networking, filesystem... DEV: tools Internal tooling for development SIZE: very large labels Mar 9, 2024

rtibbles added 3 commits March 9, 2024 16:56

Update typeface exclusion to be in Python code for easier documentation.

c9e7a9c

Update font files for excluded typefaces.

b4136eb

Update Manifest to exclude unused test modules and Django contrib apps.

ae19b87

rtibbles force-pushed the to_semi_boldly_go_where_no_one_has_semi_gone_before branch from 2c2cdf8 to ae19b87 Compare March 10, 2024 05:55

rtibbles marked this pull request as ready for review March 10, 2024 23:02

radinamatic approved these changes Mar 11, 2024

View reviewed changes

rtibbles assigned nucleogenesis Mar 12, 2024

nucleogenesis approved these changes Mar 12, 2024

View reviewed changes

marcellamaki self-requested a review March 12, 2024 21:54

marcellamaki previously requested changes Mar 12, 2024

View reviewed changes

marcellamaki merged commit e7edd02 into learningequality:release-v0.16.x Apr 25, 2024
34 checks passed

rtibbles deleted the to_semi_boldly_go_where_no_one_has_semi_gone_before branch August 9, 2024 14:37

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Update font tooling to support semi-bold font weight #11976

Update font tooling to support semi-bold font weight #11976

rtibbles commented Mar 9, 2024 •

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radinamatic commented Mar 11, 2024

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Update font tooling to support semi-bold font weight #11976

Update font tooling to support semi-bold font weight #11976

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rtibbles commented Mar 9, 2024 • edited Loading

Summary

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Testing checklist

PR process

Reviewer checklist

github-actions bot commented Mar 9, 2024 • edited Loading

Build Artifacts

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rtibbles commented Mar 9, 2024 •

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