[Fontconfig] Font cache simplification

[Albert Chin]

On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 05:30:15PM -0700, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> Keith Packard wrote:
> >I was just thinking this morning that we now have an overly complicated
> >cache system with multiple directories to hold system-wide caches and a
> >separate per-user cache mechanism. When cache files could only be stored
> >in directories, the per-user ~/.fonts.cache-1 files made sense, but now
> >that we store caches separately, why don't we simply create per-user
> >cache directories for the run-time detected cache information? This
> >would have several benefits:
> >
> >      * eliminate piles of code for managing global caches
> >      * Eliminate need to run fc-cache as a regular user
> >      * Simplify configuration (no list of cache directories)
> >
> >I suggest that ~/.fonts.cache can become a directory for per-user font
> >caches, and that the contents be per-directory cache files.
> >
> >Seem sensible?
> 
> I know I'm part of a dying breed here, but what about users who share the
> same home directory via NFS on multiple machines?  (This was very common
> once upon a time in environments like universities, and we still do it where
> I work.)    Would something as simple as ~/.fonts.cache/<hostname>/... make
> sense?

Wouldn't it make more sense to point your global fonts.conf at a
directory containing fonts from all architectures/OS versions they log
in to? Then, ~/.fonts.cache without <hostname> would be sufficient.
Moreover, the font output should be consistent across all platforms.

-- 
albert chin (china at thewrittenword.com)