[Fontconfig] cutting down the size of fonts

[Ciprian Popovici]

On 23 Jun 2003 11:50:27 -0400 Owen Taylor <otaylor at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 10:43, Peter Gasper wrote:
> > Well, I have these large font directories and I have no idea where
> > to start cleaning out unneeded fonts. I could just start deleting
> > files, but I don't imagine thats the best way to go about it. 
> > 
> > So what is the proper way to remove fonts (their files) from a
> > system which has fontconfig and freetype?
> 
> You delete them. And then, when you are done, if you want to make
> finding fonts a bit more efficient, you, as root, run 'fc-cache'
> so that the indices are updated.

I think he means "how do I know which ones to delete"?

If the fonts were installed via a package manager for your distro you
can try removing all font packages except those for your locale, for the
"Western" locale (ISO8859-1) and maybe Unicode.

If you manage your font dirs by hand, you should know that essential to
X are only the 'fixed' and the 'cursor' fonts. They are usually found
under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc. However, everything will look ugly
with just those two around. I myself have just the basic "Windows" TTF
fonts, plus fixed+cursor, plus the Artwiz fonts. They make for about 6
MB and that's all.

But I think we're getting offtopic. Peter, if you'd like more help
please contact me privately, this is not really an issue to be discussed
on this list.

-- 
Ciprian Popovici