[Fontconfig] Re: [patch]: mmapping FontConfig data structures

[Patrick Lam]

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> I mean, in a realworld scenario, the user is not supposed to run
> fc-mmap manually, right?  Neither the admin should be required to
> do that.  So my feeling is that although having fc-mmap around is
> good, but there should be a configuration option in the
> fonts.conf, that allow automatically creation of the cache.  Then
> whenever the library is used (by an arbitrary application) and it
> cannot find the mmapable cache, it tries to build it right then
> and there.   There can be mechanisms to prevent it from trying
> everytime, if for some reason, creation keeps failing though.

Yes, it would indeed be better if the mmap file was created
automatically, and there could be a configuration option which could
prevent the mmap from being created.  Unfortunately, I can't think of a
good way to prevent fontconfig from trying and failing, so I'd rather
not create the mmap file automatically until someone (possibly me) comes
up with a way to avoid continuous failure.  Ideally it would put
something in the local fonts.conf file, but fontconfig doesn't have
infrastructure to modify config files itself.

Alternately, the user could run fc-mmap as part of the windowing
environment login script, which would probably work.

pat