[MacPorts] #57272: ntpviz in ntpsec @1.1.2 cannot display anything because it cannot find the Liberation fonts

[MacPorts]

#57272: ntpviz in ntpsec @1.1.2 cannot display anything because it cannot find the
Liberation fonts
------------------------+------------------------
  Reporter:  ballapete  |      Owner:  fhgwright
      Type:  defect     |     Status:  assigned
  Priority:  Normal     |  Milestone:
 Component:  ports      |    Version:  2.5.4
Resolution:             |   Keywords:  highsierra
      Port:  ntpsec     |
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Comment (by fhgwright):

 Although there is, in fact, a bug, the description in the summary is
 incorrect.  The code in question only relates to issuing a *warning* for
 the absence of the liberation fonts, and does not affect the actual
 operation of the program.  If you have the fonts installed, and ntpviz
 isn't working for you, then you'll have to look elsewhere for the
 explanation.  I have no problem running ntpviz on my machine, as long as I
 ignore the fonts warning and the two warnings related to the absence of
 temperature data.  There are a couple of things to be aware of, however:

 1) Depending on the date range specified, ntpviz may take quite some time
 to run.  If you kill it due to inadequate patience, don't expect useful
 output.

 2) The ntpviz program doesn't directly display anything at all.  It merely
 writes a webpage, which you have to separately view in a browser.

 When I first encountered this problem, I did a bit of investigation for a
 fix.  I believe the correct fix would involve using one of the fontconfig
 utilities to check for the font, rather than building in knowledge of
 fontconfig's directory layout, but due to naming inconsistencies, the
 precise way to do this reliably isn't entirely obvious.  I also haven't
 determined whether it's actually *using* the installed liberation fonts,
 or whether it's just falling back to some other similar fonts (a common
 behavior in font-aware programs).  I also want to come up with a fix
 that's correct for all platforms, and acceptable upstream.

 Given that there's significant work in coming up with the correct fix, and
 that the only effect of the bug is to print an ignorable warning, I
 haven't considered this to be a high-priority bug.  And once the bug is
 fixed upstream, I don't think it's critical enough to apply the fix via a
 patchfile, rather than waiting for an ntpsec release with the fix.

 As to the absence of the dependency on the liberation fonts, that's
 probably a legitimate bug in the port, but given that ntpviz is not a
 critical part of ntpsec, if the font dependency is at all "heavyweight",
 then adding that dependency would most likely need to be conditioned on an
 ntpviz variant, rather than inflicting a large set of possibly unnecessary
 dependencies on the user, just for a program that the user may never run.

 As to whether the upstream version builds on High Sierra without patching,
 all I know is that it did at one time, but upstream has negligible
 interest in fixing Mac-specific problems at all, so I don't normally even
 try to build the upstream version on the Mac without my patches.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/57272#comment:3>
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