[Fontconfig] Disabling font X for language Y

[Stefan Baums]

Dear list,

I have Fontconfig 2.2.2, Xfree86 4.3.0, QT 3.2.3 and KDE 3.2.0 on
Debian testing in an en_US.UTF-8 locale.  My problem is that when
the specified font does not contain Cyrillic characters, then
Cyrillic characters get displayed with atrocious-looking,
overspaced glyphs from a Chinese font that happens to contain some
Cyrillic glyphs (see attached image), in spite of the fact that
perfectly good Cyrillic fonts are installed on the system.  The
offending Chinese font seems to be either "AR PL SungtiL
GB:style=Regular" or "AR PL KaitiM GB:style=Regular".

Now since GTK behaves properly, this could maybe be considered a
QT/KDE problem.  Or alternatively, one could argue that the ugly
Cyrillic glyphs have no business being in the Chinese font in the
first place.  But while waiting for this to be fixed on the QT/KDE
or font side, I want to tell fontconfig one simple thing: "For
Cyrillic, do not even consider using these Chinese fonts."  Can
this be accomplished in .fonts.conf, and could some kind soul tell
me how?

Further puzzling aspects of this: The same problem does not occur
with Greek, even though the situation seems to be parallel to the
Cyrillic case, with the two Chinese fonts containing some Greek
glyphs.  And neither "fc-list :lang=ru" nor "fc-list :lang=el"
actually lists the Chinese fonts that based on visual appearance I
identified as likely culprits.

Thanks for your help,
Stefan

PS.  What is the current official email address of the fontconfig
mailing list: "fontconfig AT fontconfig DOT org" or "fontconfig AT
freedesktop DOT org"?  If both addresses are active, will posts
sent to the one be visible to those subscribed to the other?

-- 
Stefan Baums
Asian Languages and Literature
University of Washington
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