Draining the font swamp

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Fri, May 25, 2007 at 01:31:08PM +0200, Jan Claeys wrote:
> Op zaterdag 19-05-2007 om 12:34 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Matt
> Zimmerman:
> > There has been some confusion and dissatisfaction over the treatment
> > of fonts in Ubuntu for a some time now, and no common understanding of
> > how to improve the situation.  I spent a little time thinking about
> > this today, and would like to present some questions whose answers I
> > hope will help us to make some progress.
> 
> My problem with fonts in Ubuntu is the same problem/dilemma that I had
> with fonts on Windows in the past:
> 
>       * I want to be able to have a lot of fonts installed on my system,
>         so that things look like they are intended to look when viewing
>         them.
>       * I don't want all of those fonts to be listed in the default font
>         dialogs and font selection widgets.
> 
> And when I'm doing graphic/design work:
> 
>       * I want to have hundreds or thousands of fonts available and
>         those that I use in a certain project (which can involve lots of
>         different applications) easily accessible.
> 
> 
> One possible solution to the issues above would be to add a system to
> fontconfig (or on top of it) that allows for the concept of what I call
> "font groups".

Sounds like you want a specialized tool like fonty-python, designed for
people who do this kind of work.

What I'm concerned with in this thread is the experience of an average user,
who cares very little about fonts, just wants their applications to
work, and be able to display readable text in their language.  We want to
have the simplest, cleanest infrastructure to provide this.

-- 
 - mdz