[Fontconfig] Finding a font but without fallback

[Pierre Marchand]

Vous (Sairus Patel) avez écrit :
> I haven't seen a response yet.
>
> Is querying for fonts without fallback not possible, or is it that
> folks don't know (or is the answer so obvious you have refrained from
> replying :^)?
>
> Any response, including a "I always want fallback to happen, so I
> don't know the answer" appreciated. Feel free to email me privately as
> well.
>
> Best,
> Sairus
>

I’m just a user but from http://fontconfig.org/fontconfig-user.html , I can 
read :
"Fontconfig performs matching by measuring the distance from a provided 
pattern to all of the available fonts in the system. The closest matching 
font is selected. This ensures that a font will always be returned, but 
doesn't ensure that it is anything like the requested pattern."

I don’t know if it applies for all methods, but I would say yes. And thus "no" 
for your question.
 

> At 4/15/2008 02:51 PM, Sairus Patel wrote:
> >Greetings.
> >
> >I'd like to ask FontConfig to find a font but *not* do font fallback
> >if a precise match isn't found.
> >

My idea would be, rather than no result to a request, to access the computed 
distance. So one could quickly evaluate if the font is close enough from 
what’s the desired functionality or not. By the way, the term "fallback" is 
not really good because returning the best font available is not the same as 
returning a default font.

I want to repeat I don’t know Fontconfig very well & I can be completely wrong 
here! But I’m still interested in the discussion because I had the same 
question and finally opted for a private management.

Bien à vous

-- 
Pierre Marchand
http://www.oep-h.com