Bug 18724

Summary: RFE: font merging
Product: fontconfig Reporter: Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot>
Component: libraryAssignee: Keith Packard <keithp>
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: medium CC: fonts-bugs, freedesktop
Version: 2.6   
Hardware: Other   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:

Description Nicolas Mailhot 2008-11-27 01:11:14 UTC 
Several major fonts like Arial and Droid Sans are created in two parts: a core multifaced part and an Unicode extension (Arial Unicode, Droid Sans Fallback). Splitting in two file sets allows people who do not need the extension part to avoid installing it (since the extension is usually huge)

For historic reasons the two parts use different font family names, even though from a functional user POW they are just two components of a single family.

There should be a documented way in fontconfig for font distributors to specify via a config file "font foo is an extension of font bar, use it preferably when bar is missing glyphs, do not show it as a separate item in font lists and only allow access to the foo family when an application asks explicitely for it"
Comment 1 Nicolas Mailhot 2008-11-27 01:23:40 UTC 
Make "documented way"  a "documented fonts.conf config pattern".
Comment 2 Behdad Esfahbod 2008-12-28 00:18:09 UTC 
I think a target="scan" pattern should work here.
Comment 3 Behdad Esfahbod 2008-12-28 00:19:37 UTC 
Nicolas, try something like this:

<match target="scan">
        <test name="family">
                <string>Arial Unicode</string>
        </test>
        <edit name="family">
                <string>Arial</string>
        </edit>
</match>

You then need to force fc-cache to recache.
Comment 4 Behdad Esfahbod 2009-07-25 13:22:52 UTC 
Nicolas, did you try that?
Comment 5 Nicolas Mailhot 2009-07-26 11:49:56 UTC 
I tried it in the droid font package and no one complained, so it didn't break anything, but I didn't have the time to test it extensively.

I do wish CJK users spent some of their copious bugzilla time on it
Comment 6 Behdad Esfahbod 2011-03-14 15:20:17 UTC 
Ok, closing for now.

Use of freedesktop.org services, including Bugzilla, is subject to our Code of Conduct. How we collect and use information is described in our Privacy Policy.