Documentation?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Mar 7 avril 2009 14:52, Joerg Sonnenberger a écrit :
>
> On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 02:32:38PM +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>> > This is not something specific to core fonts.
>>
>> Fontconfig-using apps do not crash for lack of fonts, because
>> fontconfig has built-in font substitution
>
> Are you *really* sure about that? I haven't tried Firefox 3, but older
> version definitely crashed if fontconfig wouldn't find fonts.

1. IIRC very old firefox versions used gtk1 and core fonts and crashed
like other core fonts users (I run Fedora devel, so my old is
relative)

2. I haven't seen any widespread case of fontconfig not finding fonts
in Fedora in the past years. I've seen sporadic one-of reports where
someone did something stupid, such as making fontconfig caches RO, but
nothing remotely like core fonts crashes (and I'm CCed on most Fedora
font bug reports nowadays). However googling a bit I see others
distros may not be as careful to run fc-cache timely on font install.

We do regularly have reports of core font related crashes and they do
outnumber fontconfig problems even though as this stage almost all the
distro uses fontconfig instead.

3. There are persistent reports of firefox weirdness if fontconfig is
updated while a firefox instance is running, but usually mostly
cosmetic and not affecting other apps, so I guess Mofo has a buglet
somewhere. Restarting firefox cleans up things.

4. pre-release fontconfig versions have bugs as other software and we
see them in fedora-devel. Though usually with cosmetic effects only
(font mis-selection, not crashes)

Mostly, fontconfig users complain font selection heuristics or
rendering settings are not as good as they should be. Core font users
OTOH have problems just getting their apps to run reliably.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot