client-side font rendering very very slow in X.org xserver 1.5.3 w/r200: massive fetches from VRAM, why?

[Nix]

On 1 Feb 2009, Nicolas Mailhot uttered the following:
> From a distribution point of view, apps which use fontconfig almost
> never present problems (because fontconfig will do all kinds of smart
> stuff like substituting missing fonts transparently), while apps that
> use core fonts have a long continuing history of crashing at the
> slightest opportunity (with users complaining at the distribution
> instead of upstream).

Seconded :/

> I think the Fedora 12 cycle will probably start by mass bug-filling
> against apps that need those symlinks.

The annoying pedant in me looks at the 'exposing all our fonts' goal and
wonders how you're planning to expose metafont fonts in fontconfig ;)
but I guess if you define 'fonts' to be 'fonts that freetype can
understand' this is a reasonable goal.