[Fontconfig] Proposal: the restructure of the configuration numeric prefix

[Akira TAGOH]

Hi,

I'd like to bring this topic up here to get more idea and feedbacks on
it, making it better. let me explain the background first to see why I
want to see this change in upstream. an RFE for this is also available
on bugzilla [1].

Background

fontconfig upstream now has some recommendation [2] to put the
configuration files under /etc/fonts/conf.d to get them applied
efficiently. this kind of documentation would be useful to not mess up
the system and get it working expectedly.
Aside from that, Fedora also has similar policy for the priority [3]
to improve the cases of where some fonts for the different languages
are installed on the system.
As you may be aware of, Fedora's policy overrides some numeric prefix
defined in upstream. and we are facing an issue that 65-nonlatin.conf
prevents to get some rules working properly. particularly it's harmful
for the font that contains some script which is likely to use for
different languages, such as Indic etc. it may looks like a issue that
should be fixed in Fedora. however I'd like to see some improvements
in upstream as well since there are no margins in upstream's
definition [2] to override any behaviour on the user-side or the
distributors.

Proposal

IMHO ideally any specific font configuration should be provided by the
font vendor or upstream. though providing the instant configuration or
fallbacks for convenience in fontconfig upstream may be good, however
it would be good to appear at the end to not prevent their
configurations.

Hence I'd like to classify the rough prefixes for stakeholders:
000~199 ... reserved area of fontconfig upstream for minimal sets of
the configurations
            such as: 10-*.conf, 50-user.conf and so on
            any configuration files that contains the specific font
names shouldn't be put in this area.
300~499 ... reserved area of the system administrators
600~799 ... reserved area of the distributors
900~    ... reserved area of fontconfig upstream for convenience configurations

Anyway, the point is to add some spaces for the users and distributors
between the minimal sets of the configurations and the actual rules in
upstream that contains any font names. this would let the
users/distributors allow to determine the behaviours prior to
upstream's. though one who maintains any fontconfig configuration
files needs to update the numeric prefix after that, the idea itself
won't breaks anything unless someone puts something in the range of
300~799 in the above case.

Any thoughts or comments are welcome.

Thanks in advance,

[1] ... http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26504
[2] ... http://cgit.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/tree/conf.d/README
[3] ... http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fontconfig_packaging_tips
-- 
Akira TAGOH