[Fontconfig] font priorities?

[Patrick Lam]

Paul Wise wrote:
> I'm packaging the khmer ttf fonts for Debian[1], they are "Khmer OS",
> "Khmer OS Fasthand", "Khmer OS Freehand", "Khmer OS Metal Chrieng",
> "Khmer OS Muol" and "Khmer OS System". I'd like to prioritise the fonts
> like this: "Khmer OS" > "Khmer OS System" > the rest, since the rest are
> more decorative fonts. I checked fonts-conf(5), but I'm still not sure
> how to do this. Does anyone have any idea how to to go about this? Also,
> the debian font manager defoma has a way to assign priority values (from
> 0 to 100) for each font file, is there an equivalent in fontconfig?

As far as I can tell, the way that fontconfig supports font priorities 
(in some sense) is through the use of aliases.  For instance, if you 
request 'sans-serif', then it looks for:

                 <family>serif</family>
                 <prefer>
                         <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family>
                         <family>Times New Roman</family>
                         <family>Thorndale AMT</family>
                         <family>Luxi Serif</family>
    			etc...

The font that gets returned for a specific query of course depends on 
the query that you make.  At the fontconfig level, you get what you ask 
for; aside from font aliases, it won't decide for you what you asked for.

pat