Bug 55506 – unnecessary font dirs in fonts.conf

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Julien Allanos (RETIRED) 2004-06-28 23:57:10 UTC]

as <dir> are scanned recursively by fontconfig, there are redondant font dirs:

      <dir>/usr/share/fonts/Type1</dir>
         <dir>/usr/share/fonts/Type1</dir> <dir>/usr/share/fonts/truetype</dir>
        <dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
        <dir>/usr/local/share/fonts</dir>
        <dir>/usr/share/fonts/75dpi</dir>
        <dir>/usr/share/fonts/100dpi</dir>
        <dir>~/.fonts</dir>

i propose:

        <dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
        <dir>/usr/local/share/fonts</dir>
        <dir>~/.fonts</dir>

[Comment 1 veif 2005-07-13 22:37:37 UTC]

fontconfig-2.2.3 and 2.3.2 original package has
    <dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
    <dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</dir>

and fontconfig-2.2-local_fontdir-r1.patch add
    <dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
    <dir>/usr/local/share/fonts</dir>
    <dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi</dir>
    <dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi</dir>
    <dir>~/.fonts</dir>

now /usr/X11R6/lib/X11fonts is symlink to /usr/share/fonts , i think
 it should be removed.it's wasting time to check /usr/share/fonts twice when
fc-cache.

is there ebuild use /usr/local/share/fonts? if nothing,/usr/local/share/fonts
shuold be removed,too. i think people use /usr/local/share/fonts should add it
to local.conf.
i think font-path gentoo never use is shoud be added to local.conf,
i propose
font.conf:

<dir>/usr/share/fonts<dir>

local.conf.example:

<dir>/usr/local/share/</dir>
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>

[Comment 2 Jonas MG 2005-11-27 15:36:29 UTC]

See at http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102116

[Comment 3 LuisMi Garcia 2005-12-30 17:22:11 UTC]

I have done some test and found that while doing fc-cache, same dirs were scaned at least twice. Then I fixed that and my seystem was faster. Then I found this old bug.

I think this should be fixed, not only for the time wasted on fc-cache. It seems cache gets bigger when fc-cache scans a directory twice, or something like that.

Leaving only the directory where the fonts are installed (one time) and ~/.fonts, and doing an fc-cache -fv, makes app startup time decreases on 7%  (at least on the kde land).

If someone needs it, I can provide info on how I made the test. It's tested on 2 machines, one x86, another amd64.

[Comment 4 LuisMi Garcia 2006-01-01 14:34:21 UTC]

Would be nice if someone makes some benchmarks in order to test if this improves the startup time of apps.

If you're going to test this, please make an fc-cache -fv, just to have the cache recently rebuild just before and after the changes.

Thanks.

[Comment 5 foser (RETIRED) 2006-04-07 05:57:41 UTC]

All of those paths have a purpose to different xorg server versions. In fontconfig-2.3.2-r1 I removed some older paths that probably have not much value anymore.