2.3. Fonts

2.3.1. Introduction

It is a nice feature for a software center to allows users the installation of additional fonts. This meta-info specification describes how metadata about fonts should be structured.

Font packages can ship one or more files in /usr/share/appdata/%{id}.metainfo.xml.

Font metadata files can - just likle all other metainfo files - be translated. See the section about translation for more information about that.

2.3.2. Example file

The font meta-info file should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<component type="font">
  <id>LinLibertine_M.otf</id>
  <metadata_licence>CC0</metadata_licence>
  <name>Libertine</name>
  <summary>Linux Libertine Open fonts</summary>
  <font_classifier>Mono</font_classifier>
  <font_parent>Libertine</font_parent>
</component>

2.3.3. File specification

Note that the XML root must have the type property set to font. This clearly identified this metainfo document as describing a font.

<id/>

For fonts, the %{id} is the same name as the installed font file.

<metadata_licence/>

The <metadata_licence/> tag is required. See Section 2.1, “Generic Component” for a description of this tag.

<name/>

Set a name for your font.

<summary/>

A short description of the font described in this metainfo file.

<description/>

Add a long description of your font. Some rules apply (will soon be split out to a "description guidelines" section).

Do not assume the format is HTML. Only paragraph, ordered list and unordered list are supported at this time.

<screenshots/>

A screenshot presents your font to the outside world, and could be seen by hundreds or thousands of people.

The <screenshots/> tag contains multiple <screenshot/> childrens, where at least one of them must have the property type="default" to indicate the application's primary screenshot. Additionally, the <screenshot/> tags should define the width and height of the referenced screenshot as properties. The value of these tags is a direct URL to a screenshot uploaded to a public location on the web.

<url/>

This is a recommended tag for links of type homepage. Links of type homepage should be a link to the upstream homepage for the application. See See Section 2.1, “Generic Component” for a description of this tag.

<provides/>

This tag is described for generic components at Section 2.1, “Generic Component” in detail.

You can add one or more children of type <font/> to make the font filenames and names known to the system. If this tag is not present, the name and id tag values will be used by the distribution's Appstream-generator to recreate this tag, so it's not required to add it.

<font_classifier/>

Define a description of the font face to caption it when compared against other fonts in the same family.

Some commonly used values are, for example:

Mono
Mono Extra Light
Outline
Sans
Serif
Condensed
...

<font_parent/>

The name of the font package this particular font is part of. This is a required tag.