What is the status of this fork versus LiniuxLibertine.org?

[gctwnl]

I have stumbled onto this fork after having started to work with the fork from LinuxLibertine.org. Hoe do these relate?

Is it correct to say that LinuxLibertine is dead and this is the alive one?

[fitojb]

This fork is dormant too, alas...

[Firestar-Reimu]

I really love libertine, especially its math fonts

But libertinus is very buggy for that

You can see https://github.com/StefanPeev/Common-Serif

[alerque]

This fork is alive. I'm a couple months behind of processing PRs but this fork is not dead.

The linuxlibertine project on the other hand is completely dead and has been for many years. This Libertinus project is the defacto continuation.

@Firestar-Reimu Are you saying you think Libertinus is more buggy than Linux Libertine? The main difference is that we've collected hundreds of bug fixes!

[gctwnl]

I really love libertine, especially its math fonts

But libertinus is very buggy for that

You can see https://github.com/StefanPeev/Common-Serif

Serif only, alas. Haven't looked into it further.

[gctwnl]

This fork is alive. I'm a couple months behind of processing PRs but this fork is not dead.

The linuxlibertine project on the other hand is completely dead and has been for many years. This Libertinus project is the defacto continuation.

@Firestar-Reimu Are you saying you think Libertinus is more buggy than Linux Libertine? The main difference is that we've collected hundreds of bug fixes!

That is good news. In the meantime I've bought a very reasonably priced (and even better looking flared font) alternative with a permissive license (Ophian).

[Enivex]

I really love libertine, especially its math fonts

But libertinus is very buggy for that

You can see https://github.com/StefanPeev/Common-Serif

I don't understand the purpose of constantly making forks instead of contributing to the original project.

[waldyrious]

@Enivex: In the case of Common Serif, @StefanPeev did contribute to this project (#212) and attempted a major update at #520, but it had too many (and too large) changes to be easily integrated (as @imposeren pointed out in this comment), so he decided to develop the project separately (as I quoted in this comment). I do wish the projects could be merged, but that seems to be quite a large undertaking due to the fundamental changes made in the fork, IIUC.

[hvoss49]

The current Libertinus seems not be maintained! If @StefanPeev had taken over maintainer ship he could change everything and we had still only the Libertinus. Now we have Common Serif, Libertinus Sans, Libertines Mono, and Libertinus Math ...

[alerque]

This is still maintained. The limiting factor with "changing everything" is not so much a matter of who is in charge as it is a practical consideration for downstream users.

I'd be happy to facilitate a full overhaul with masters to be a variable font that we can instance for static weights. The issue is we can't just release that as Libertinus Serif until it is at or (at least close to) feature parity with the existing font, which last I checked it wasn't. It may be now it was a few months back when I had a look. We could release a minor version bump if we had something close to metric compatibility or a new major version if the metrics are all going to change, but releasing a new version of the same font that doesn't serve the needs of existing users (whatever esoteric glyphs they might be using) is a no go. For getting things up to speed using a new font name was probably a good idea. If it gets far enough along to be a suitable successor version to the current Libertinus Serif family I'll be happy to help re-integrate the build system and fold it into this project.

[waldyrious]

Is there is a way to obtain some sort of exhaustive parity report for Common Serif vs. Libertinus Serif? What sort of checks would one need to perform? And is there a way to automate those checks?

Full feature parity would signal readiness of the projects to be re-merged (assuming @StefanPeev would be interested in doing so, which I hope he is!).

[StefanPeev]

@alerque @waldyrious @fitojb @gctwnl @Enivex It does not matter at all whether the project will be developed under one or another name, the most important thing is to build an overall strategy for the project with the perspective of building in a near future of a variable fonts. At the moment, this is absolutely impossible. All the PRs that are submitted in Libertinus only patch holes in the project and further increase the inconsistencies in the construction of the graphemes. The project must be fundamentally changed. Libertinus is a pretty fine classical font project. It can add value worldwide in the open source projects, but it needs a good strategy otherwise the project will follow the fate of Trufont (a highly promising open source font editor project that is currently completely frozen). A really good strategy is the open source community to rally around the idea of parallel development of both font projects like Libertinus, font editors like Trufont or FontForge (the font editors need to be installable (not to be only online based) because this is the way to include young students in the idea of contributing the font projects and thus to prepare young people to be a future developers of free fonts) and font manager like Fontmatrix. I'm not sure is there enough energy for such a global aims...

[Firestar-Reimu]

This fork is alive. I'm a couple months behind of processing PRs but this fork is not dead.

The linuxlibertine project on the other hand is completely dead and has been for many years. This Libertinus project is the defacto continuation.

@Firestar-Reimu Are you saying you think Libertinus is more buggy than Linux Libertine? The main difference is that we've collected hundreds of bug fixes!

Thanks! Because I found that the math font of libertinus is much worse that the libertine math provided by newtxmath