1552941 - More complete fontconfig integration in the shared font-list implementation

Status: NEW

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

The initial implementation of the cross-process shared font list in bug 1514869 does not fully support fontconfig features. In particular, font-family names are simply looked up in the list of installed font families, rather than resolved through fontconfig APIs.

This means that font substitutions and aliases configured through fonts.conf will not be respected; the CSS font-family value will just be matched against the actual installed fonts, without regard to aliases etc that may have been set up by the distro or user.

We should fix this, particularly because it's fairly common to have fontconfig rules that provide free-software aliases for well-known proprietary Windows and macOS fonts. If these aliases are not handled, users will get a degraded font-selection experience.

Comment 1

[emil]

Attachment: Fontconfig for Syriac fonts

I am running into this issue particularly because Syriac has three different script styles and there are Syriac fonts for each of those (https://bethmardutho.org/meltho/) styles.

I have created a github repository that helps install the fonts and a fontconfig file for each style (https://github.com/esoleyman/Syriac-Linux/). What I have noticed that if I have all of the Meltho fonts installed, then only the Estrangelo Edessa is picked up despite the fontconfig stating 'East Syriac Adiabene'.