Google Summer of Code ideas needed

[Michal Srb]

Hi,

I am not sure if it fits under programs related to X: fontconfig

- problem:
The way data are stored and/or searched is currently very inefficient. With 
many fonts and fontconfig rules installed in system, the libfontconfig slows 
down start of every graphical program.

A quick test on my current system:
I've got about 4500 files in /usr/share/fonts and standard set of opensuse 
font config rules. Starting and immediately quitting KDE's Konsole in valgrind 
resulted in 42% of time spent in libfontconfig! FcFontMatch was called 11 
times only.

This happens for every program started. Just imagine how much time is spent 
there during start of big desktop environments...

- project description:
Rewriting/optimizing the way fontconfig stores and searches the font cache.

- difficulty: easy/medium
Imho any non-trivial algorithm will be better than current state.
It's userspace library, should be easy to test. But there doesn't seem to be 
any proper set of tests covering the current functionality now, so it may be 
necessary to create them first.

- skills:
C, some knowledge about fonts, fontconfig rules

Michal Srb