Re: bin/50152: fontconfig and tex fonts

[David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR xsrc/50152; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/50152: fontconfig and tex fonts
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 18:32:09 +0000

 On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 06:00:01PM +0000, David Holland wrote:
  > [...]
 
 ok, some things that came up in chat:
 
  - there are actually four problems here:
 (1) the default fontconfig config in native X doesn't include lots of
 perfectly good installed fonts that it ought to.
 (2) fc-cache fails on /usr/X11R7/lib/X11/fonts/encodings, as well as
 on assorted texmf fonts dirs that it maybe (or maybe not) ought to
 understand.
 (3) fontconfig isn't handling the metadata for a bunch of otherwise
 useable tex fonts correctly, which might or might not be its fault.
 (4) exactly which of these things are fontconfig bugs is not clear
 because fc-cache's error reporting is rubbish.
 
  - jmcneill points out that the right thing is to stick
 <include ignore_missing="yes">/usr/pkg/etc/fonts/conf.d</include>
 in the default fontconfig config, and then have pkgsrc packages that
 install fonts populate this.
 
  - (But, should /usr/pkg/share/fonts be referenced from there or from
 /etc/fonts for compatibility with existing font packages, or both?
 Does fontconfig choke if directories are listed twice?)
 
  - (it should really be /usr/pkg/share/fonts/conf.d or something of
 the sort as it's not actually configurable material... but that won't
 work)
 
  - tex font packages that don't provide adequate metadata for
 fontconfig's use should be patched; if fontconfig is failing to parse
 existing metadata, fontconfig should be patched.
 
  - other packages with fonts should also provide fontconfig entries,
 like ghostscript-fonts.
 
  - Someone(TM) should fix fc-cache's error reporting.
 
  - fontconfig's config language is from hell, but we're stuck with it
 unless we want to rewrite.
 
 -- 
 David A. Holland
 dholland%netbsd.org@localhost