When can Noto Hebrew Fonts be released?

[markhdavid]

Noto Hebrew Fonts, for the families Sans, Serif, and Rashi, as released on Google Fonts have several major issues that have already been resolved in this repo. The issues are especially important as regards Yiddish.

• These issues are all fixed and are important, especially to Yiddish users who use standard as well as many historical orthographies:
  • https://github.com/notofonts/hebrew/issues/40
  • https://github.com/notofonts/hebrew/issues/39
  • https://github.com/notofonts/hebrew/issues/38

Note that Noto Sans Hebrew is the usual backup font for Hebrew, at least on Chrome Browser on MacOS, so it's showing up all over the web whenever Yiddish fonts are called for that don't happen to be on anyone's system.

Here are the locations in the repo for each of the 3 font families with their version numbers:

• sources/NotoSansHebrew.glyphs 2.003
• sources/NotoSerifHebrew.glyphs 2.003
• sources/NotoRashiHebrew.glyphs 1.006

Note that these version numbers are identical to their counterparts in the Google Fonts released fonts. So, at a minimum, the version numbers need to be upped. Can this be done, and anything else needed, so that someone from Google Fonts can take these fonts over and get them out to the Google Fonts download site. Here are download pages for each of the three fonts:

• Sans:
  • https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Hebrew
• Serif:
  • https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Serif+Hebrew
• Rashi:
  • https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Rashi+Hebrew

[simoncozens]

Hi Mark, sorry that I haven't replied to your email about this. I am planning to do new Hebrew releases this quarter and then have them onboarded to GF. I'll look over the existing issues, see what can be fixed, and then do a release. Like most open source software we bump the version numbers just prior to release.

[simoncozens]

Releases have gone out now.

[markhdavid]

Releases have gone out now.

Hi @simoncozens, would you mind expanding on what you mean by this? I'm learning, but I was recently told Google Fonts has two lists in the google/fonts repo, to_sandbox and to_production, which list where the font families are. I.e.,

• sandbox fonts:
  • https://github.com/google/fonts/blob/main/to_sandbox.txt
• production fonts:
  • https://github.com/google/fonts/blob/main/to_production.txt

But I don't see Noto Hebrew fonts in either list. How do I track progress? Is this visible to me somehow?

[simoncozens]

But I don't see Noto Hebrew fonts in either list.

Right. The process is manual, because the fonts require reviewing from the onboarders. So it looks like this:

• I make the releases.
• I make the pull requests to google/fonts (https://github.com/google/fonts/pull/7588, https://github.com/google/fonts/pull/7589, https://github.com/google/fonts/pull/7590)
• Onboarders work their way through the queue of pull requests and get to the Hebrew PRs
• They manually review the changes and either approve/merge or send them back to me. (This has happened on Wednesday for two of the families.)
• They are then moved to a sandbox server, checked again for changes, and finally to production. The sandbox/production lists are updated once a week, and pushed by the engineering team once per week.

You can track where the PRs are in the cycle by looking at their status on the project board.

[markhdavid]

...

• They manually review the changes and either approve/merge or send them back to me. (This has happened on Wednesday for two of the families.)

... You can track where the PRs are in the cycle by looking at their status on the project board.

Thanks @simoncozens for that detailed explanation. I am currently unable to find Noto Sans Hebrew at all on the project board. It seems the PR for 'Sans' has been merged like the other two fonts' PRs, so it appears to have gone past the above step of being merged by onboarders (but only as of yesterday, if that's relevant?). In any case, is there a reason Noto Sans Hebrew is not on the project board?