[Fontconfig] Slow startup of trivial GNOME 2.6 applications

[Stefaan A Eeckels]

Hi List,

I've just subscribed, please direct me to the answer
if what I'm about to ask is the FAQ of the century :-).

Comparing Sun's Gnome 2.0 and the Blastwave build of
Gnome 2.6 (on Solaris/SPARC), I've noticed that the
2.6 applications have an incredibly long start-up time
(even on a Blade 2000 2x900cu, which while not the
fastest machine on earth, is certainly no slouch). 
A bit of trussing reveals that even the most trivial
of programs performs a full scan of all the available
font files on the system. 

Is this the normal behaviour for fontconfig, or a coding
error in Gnome? Surely, trivial applications such as
a calculator, or the utility to add a link to a menu,
should have the ability to access the couple of system
fonts they use without scanning all font directories.

Thanks and kind regards,

-- 
Stefaan
-- 
"What is stated clearly conceives easily."  -- Inspired sales droid