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ContentsContents
AppStream
  1. 1 About AppStream
  2. 2 Upstream Metadata
  3. 3 Catalog Metadata
  4. 4 Miscellaneous
  5. 5 Metadata Quickstart
  6. 6 Data Validation
  7. 7 Manual pages
      appstreamcli 2012-2024Matthias Klumpp AppStream 26 July,2012 appstreamcli1appstreamcliHandle AppStream metadata formats and query AppStream dataappstreamcliCOMMANDDescription This manual page documents briefly the appstreamcli command. appstreamcli is a small helper tool to work with AppStream metadata and access the AppStream component index from the command-line. The AppStream component index contains a list of all available software components for your distribution, matched to their package names. It is generated using AppStream XML or Debian DEP-11 data, which is provided by your distributor. For more information about the AppStream project and the other components which are part of it, take a look at the AppStream pages at Freedesktop.org. Optionsget IDGet a component from the metadata pool by its identifier.ssearch TERMSearch the AppStream component pool for a given search term.what-provides TYPE TERM Return components which provide a given item. An item type can be specified using the TYPE parameter, a value to search for has to be supplied using the TERM parameter. Examples: Get components which handle the "text/xml" mediatype. appstreamcli what-provides mediatype "text/xml" Get component which provides the "libfoo.so.2" library. appstreamcli what-provides lib libfoo.so.2 refreshrefresh-cache Trigger a database refresh, if necessary. In case you want to force the database to be rebuilt, supply the --force flag. This command must be executed with root permission.status Display various information about the installed metadata and the metadata cache. os-info Show information about the current operating system from the metadata index. This requires the operating system to provide a operating-system component for itself. dump ID Dump the complete XML descriptions of components with the given ID that were found in the metadata pool. validate FILES Validate AppStream XML metadata for compliance with the specification. Both XML metadata types, upstream and distro XML, are handled. The format type which should be validated is determined automatically. The --pedantic flag triggers a more pedantic validation of the file, including minor and style issues in the report. validate-tree DIRECTORY Validate AppStream XML metadata found in a file-tree. This performs a standard validation of all found metadata, but also checks for additional errors, like the presence of .desktop files and validity of other additional metadata. check-license LICENSE Test a license string or license expression for validity and display details about it. This will check whether the license string is considered to be valid for AppStream, and return a non-zero exit code if it is not. The command will also display useful information like the canonical ID of a license, whether it is suitable as license for AppStream metadata, and whether the license is considered to be for Free and Open Source software or proprietary software. AppStream will consider any license as Free and Open Source that is marked as suitable by either the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Open Source Initiative (OSI) or explicit license list of the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). install ID Install a software component by its ID using the package manager or Flatpak. This resolves the AppStream component ID to an installation candidate and then calls either the native package manager or Flatpak (if available) to install the component. remove ID Uninstall a software component by its ID using the package manager or Flatpak. This will uninstall software matching the selected ID using either the native package manager or Flatpak (if available). put FILE Install a metadata file into the right directory on the current machine. compare-versionsvercmp VER1 [CMP] VER2 Compare two version numbers. If two version numbers are given as parameters, the versions will be compared and the comparison result will be printed to stdout. If a version number, a comparison operator and another version number are passed in as parameter, the result of the comparison operation will be printed to stdout, and appstreamcli will exit with a non-zero exit status in case the comparison failed. The comparison operator can be one of the following: eq - Equal tone - Not equal tolt - Less thangt - Greater thanle - Less than or equal toge - Greater than or equal tonew-template TYPE FILE Create a metainfo file template to be used by software projects. The --from-desktop option can be used to use a .desktop file as template for generating the example file. The generated files contain example entries which need to be filed in with the actual desired values by the project author. The first TYPE parameter is the name of an AppStream component type. For a complete list check out the documentation or the help output of appstreamcli for this subcommand. make-desktop-file MI_FILE DESKTOP_FILE Create a XDG desktop-entry file from a metainfo file. If the desktop-entry file specified in DESKTOP_FILE already exists, it will get extended with the new information extracted from the metainfo file. Otherwise a new file will be created. This command will use the first binary mentioned in a provides tag of the component for the Exec= field of the new desktop-entry file. If this is not the desired behavior, the --exec flag can be used to explicitly define a binary to launch. Other methods of launching the application are currently not supported. In order to generate a proper desktop-entry, this command assumes that not only the minimally required tags for an AppStream component are set, but also that it has an <icon/> tag of type "stock" to describe the stock icon that should be used as well as a <categories/> tag containing the categories the application should be placed in. news-to-metainfo NEWS_FILE MI_FILE [OUT_FILE] This command converts a NEWS file as used by many open source projects into the XML used by AppStream. Since NEWS files are free text, a lot of heuristics will be applied to get reasonable results. The converter can also read a YAML version of the AppStream release description and convert it to XML as well. If the metainfo file MI_FILE already exists, it will be augmented with the new release entries, otherwise the release entries will be written without any wrapping component. If [OUT_FILE] is specified, instead of acting on MI_FILE the changed data will be written to the particular file. If any of the output filenames is set to "-", the output will instead be written to stdout. The --format option can be used to enforce reading the input file in a specific format ("text" or "yaml") in case the format autodetection fails. The --limit option is used to limit the amount of release entries written (the newest entries will always be first). metainfo-to-news MI_FILE NEWS_FILE This command reverses the news-to-metainfo command and writes a NEWS file as text or YAML using the XML contained in a metainfo file. If NEWS_FILE is set to "-", the resulting data will be written to stdout instead of to a file. The --format option can be used to explicitly specify the output format ("yaml" or "text"). If it is not set, appstreamcli will guess which format is most suitable. convert FILE1 FILE1 Converts AppStream XML metadata into its YAML representation and vice versa. compose Composes an AppStream metadata catalog from a directory tree with metainfo files. This command is only available if the org.freedesktop.appstream.compose component is installed. See appstreamcli-compose1 for more information. --detailsPrint out more information about a found component.--no-colorDon't print colored output.--no-netDo not access the network when validating metadata. The same effect can be achieved by setting the AS_VALIDATE_NONET environment variable before running appstreamcli. --versionDisplay the version number of appstreamcliSee Alsopkcon1.AUTHOR This manual page was written by Matthias Klumpp matthias@tenstral.net. appstreamcli compose 2020-2024Matthias Klumpp AppStream 28 Aug,2020 appstreamcli compose1appstreamcli-composeCompose AppStream metadata catalog from directory treesappstreamcli composeCOMMANDDescription This manual page documents briefly the appstreamcli compose command. The appstreamcli compose tool is used to construct AppStream metadata catalogs from directory trees. The tool will also perform many related metadata generation actions, like resizing icons and screenshots and merging in data from referenced desktop-entry files as well as translation status information. Therefore, the tool provides a fast way to test how the final processed metadata for an application that is shipped to users may look like. It also provides a way to easily generate AppStream data for projects which do not need a more complex data generator like appstream-generator. In order for the appstreamcli compose command to be available, you may need to install the optional compose module for appstreamcli first. For more information about the AppStream project and the other components which are part of it, take a look at the AppStream pages at Freedesktop.org. OptionsSOURCE-DIRECTORIES A list of directories to process needs to be provided as positional parameters. Data from all directories will be combined into one output namespace. --origin NAME Set the AppStream data origin identifier. This can be a value like "debian-unstable-main" or "flathub". --result-root DIR Sets the directory where all generated output that is deployed to a user's machine is exported to. If this parameter is not set and we only have one directory to process, we use that directory as default output path. If both --data-dir and --icons-dir are set, --result-root is not necessary and no data will be written to that directory. --data-dir DIR Override the directory where the generated AppStream metadata catalog will be written to. Data will be written directly to this directory, and no supdirectories will be created (unlike when using --result-root to set an output location). --icons-dir DIR Override the directory where the cached icons are exported to. --hints-dir DIR Set a directory where hints reported generated during metadata processing are saved to. If this parameter is not set, no HTML/YAML hint reports will be saved. --media-dir DIR If set, creates a directory with media content (icons, screenshots, ...) that can be served via a webserver. The metadata will be extended to include information about these remote media. --media-baseurl URL The URL under which the contents of a directory set via --media-dir will be served. This value must be set if a media directory is created. --prefix DIR Set the default prefix that is used in the processed directories. If none is set explicitly, /usr is assumed. --print-report MODE Print the issue hints report (that gets exported as HTML and YAML document when --hints-dir was set) to the console in text form. Various print modes are supported: on-error only prints a short report if the run failed (default), short generates an abridged report that is always printed and full results in a detailed report to be printed. --no-partial-urls If set, all URLs in the generated data will be absolute and media_baseurl will not be used. This makes changing the media mirror harder without regenerating all data and is generally not recommended, to increase flexibility. --icon-policy POLICY-STRING Override the existing icon policy with a custom one. The icon policy sets how icons of different sizes should be dealt with. They can be in the icon cache only, be a remote icon in the media location or be both cached and available in the remote location. The icon-policy string is comprised of comma-separated %{size}x%{size}@%{scale}=%{state} statements. The size and scale are that of the respective icon, with the scale being allowed to be omitted if it is 1. The state can be one of remote, cached or cached-remote. By default, a policy of 48x48=cached,48x48@2=cached,64x64=cached,64x64@2=cached,128x128=cached-remote,128x128@2=cached-remote is selected. --components COMPONENT-IDs Set a comma-separated list of AppStream component IDs that should be considered for the generated metadata. All components that exist in the input data but are not mentioned in this list will be ignored for the generated output. --no-colorDon't print colored output.--verboseDisplay extra debugging information--versionDisplay the version number of appstreamcli composeSee Also appstreamcli1, appstream-generator1. AUTHOR This manual page was written by Matthias Klumpp matthias@tenstral.net.
  8. 8 AppStream API Reference
  9. Index
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2.8 Fonts

2.8.1 Introduction

A software center can allow users to install additional fonts using font metadata. Also, applications can use font metadata to find missing fonts (for example, if a special mathematical font is needed) in the distribution's software sources. This metainfo specification describes how metadata for fonts or font collections should be structured.

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

Font metadata files can – just like all other metainfo files – be translated. See the section about translation for more information.

Note
Note

A font component is in most cases not describing a single font, but rather a collection of fonts that are grouped together, usually by their art style or font-family.

To make the individual fonts known to the system, use the <provides/> ↪ <font/> tag.

2.8.2 Example file

A minimal font metainfo file can look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<component type="font">
  <id>com.latofonts.Lato</id>
  <metadata_license>MIT</metadata_license>
  <project_license>OFL-1.1</project_license>

  <name>Lato</name>
  <summary>A sanserif type­face fam­ily</summary>
  <description>
    <p>
      Lato is a sanserif type­face fam­ily designed in the Sum­mer 2010 by Warsaw-​​based designer
      Łukasz Dziedzic (“Lato” means “Sum­mer” in Pol­ish). In Decem­ber 2010 the Lato fam­ily
      was pub­lished under the open-​​source Open Font License by his foundry tyPoland, with
      sup­port from Google.
    </p>
  </description>

  <provides>
    <font>Lato Regular</font>
    <font>Lato Italic</font>
    <font>Lato Bold</font>
    <font>Lato Light</font>
    <font>Lato Light Italic</font>
    ...
  </provides>
</component>

2.8.3 File specification

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

<id/>

For fonts, the %{id} must follow the reverse-DNS scheme as described for generic components. For the product name part, it is recommended to take the the name of the font or font bundle without whitespace.

<metadata_license/>

The <metadata_license/> tag is required. See <metadata_license/> for a description of this tag.

<name/>

Set a name for the font or font collection.

<summary/>

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

<description/>

Add a long description of your font. Do not assume the format is HTML. Only paragraph, ordered list and unordered list are supported at this time.

See the generic component <description/> for a detailed description of this tag.

<screenshots/>

A screenshot presents your font to the outside world.

If the font metadata does not define an own screenshot, the AppStream generator is supposed to render one or multiple sample images using the respective font.

See the generic component <screenshots/> for a detailed description of this tag.

<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 the generic component <url/> for a description of this tag.

<provides/> ↪ <font/> 

This tag is described in detail for generic components at <provides/>.

You should add one or more children of type <font/> to make the font's full-names known. The full-name should be the same as given in the font file for the English language. If no full-name is set, a space-separated combination of the font's family and style is used instead. The font must have a family defined to be included.

The full-name entry should show the complete name of a typeface in its “natural” form, including style and character set information (if any), and without abbreviations. This is the name that some systems and applications look at to determine full, unabbreviated font menu names.

If you want to query the full-name and its family and style to see what needs to be added to this tag, you can use the fc-query utility of Fonconfig:

fc-query --format='FN: %{fullname[0]}\nFS: %{family[0]} %{style[0]}\n' 
FONT-FILENAME

Examples:

<provides>
  <font>Lato Heavy Italic</font>
  <font>Noto Kufi Arabic Bold</font>
  <font>Liberation Serif Bold Italic</font>
  <font>FontAwesome Regular</font>
</provides>

If no <font/> tags were defined, the AppStream catalog data generator should try to extract them from the actual font files found in the software package/bundle.

In every case, the names given in the provides tag must match the metadat the fonts contain themselves. If the data of the font files is incomplete, the data can not be extended by the <font/> tag. This is important because the AppStream generator may use the data to pick the right fonts, and because applications expect the exact font they requested via AppStream to be present on the system after the component was installed (and not one which has different metadata).

<languages/> 

This tag gives information about the locale a font supports.

This tak allows specifying the main locale (and thereby scripts) the font can be used with. It does not have to contain an extensive list, as the AppStream metadata generator will try get obtain that information from the font files themselves, but it is useful to define to hint the generator in the right direction.

If samples of the font are rendered as screenshots by the catalog metadata generator, the locale mentioned in the metainfo file will be preferred over automatically (or heuristically) defined ones.

You can use the following command to determine which languages a font supports:

fc-query --format='%{lang}\n' 
FONT-FILENAME

Tag example:

<languages>
  <lang>de</lang>
  <lang>en</lang>
  <lang>cn</lang>
</languages>

For a component of type font, the following tags are required and must be present: <id/>, <name/>, <summary/>, <metadata_license/>, <provides/> ↪ <font/>.