[Fontconfig] Tutorial or guidance for using fontconfig

[Jesper L. Nielsen]

Hi Behdad and list..

After poking around, using gprof and other things I found a reason for  
spending all the time in Fontconfig. I was calling  
pango_ft2_font_map_new() for every object I wanted to draw, and  
apparently this function can be reused throughout my application.

Now I'm looking at sharing the fontconfig-cache on NFS, and as each  
embedded devices share the same NFS mount, this should be simple  
however I have some questions for the format.

1: Since the NFS mount is mounted as read/write, the first embedded  
system that boots will create the cache. Does the building of cache  
have a lock mechanism, or might this be a race condition?
2: It seems the fontcache leaves a file for every font used as it  
runs, and that the filenames have a hostname appended to them? If this  
is true, would it at all be possible to generate a fontconfig-cache on  
the NFS server, if the embedded system doesn't share the same  
hostname? Wouldn't this just generate a whole bunch of files for each  
embedded device?
3: Is the format of the cache files platform independent?

Hope I can get some pointers now that I've regained my faith in  
FontConfig :)

All the best.
Jesper

On Jan 9, 2009, at 11:06 AM, Jesper L. Nielsen wrote:
>>
>> Sure, building caches is slow.  The first question is why is it  
>> building the
>> cache on each startup.
>>
>
> Because it is on an embedded system and no place to save the caching  
> database after each reboot. However I can work past that using some  
> NFS trickery.
>
>>> I have been running sysprof and the majority of time spend while
>>> rendering fonts seems to be in fontconfig.
>>>
>>> I don't know how to dump Sysprof output to text, so I've attached a
>>> screendump.
>>
>> The screenshot shows nothing really.  The fontconfig functions you  
>> are showing
>> in the shot are taking only 3% of the total time.
>>
>
> True, I'll get some better numbers on the embedded system soon. But  
> the screenshot only shows a simple test program I produced to  
> profile the pango calls. So the times should be regarded as relativ,  
> and kernel time used disregarded.
>>> So what I mean is that there a references to FcPattern,  
>>> PangoFcFont and
>>> other things defined in the Fontconfig specific source files. So  
>>> taking
>>> out just the Fontconfig part for the pangoft2.c would require some  
>>> work.
>>
>> pantoft2 subclasses pangofc.  So, you are pretty much talking about  
>> writing a
>> new pango backend.  And then, the pango shapers also depend on  
>> pangofc.  So
>> you have to modify those too.  Really, your fighting the wrong  
>> battle.  Just
>> focus on getting fontconfig working for you.
>>
> I was mustering myself to write a whole new backend, but if the  
> shaper also uses FontConfig, I think I'll better give FontConfig  
> another shot.
>
> Jesper