[Fontconfig] Application startup performance

[u-pnrz at aetey.se]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 07:29:44AM -0800, Keith Packard wrote:
> > I would be even more uncomfortable if there will be some locks involved
> > or some daemons would be expected to run just to be able to rely on
> > fontconfig. Explicit cache creation looks like the cleanest solution.
> 
> Here's another alternative -- cache creation could be the responsibility
> of fc-cache, but perhaps applications could validate the cache by
> checking directory timestamps and loading directories which were out of
> date manually (as they do today) but *not* write out that information

I would prefer them to skip such directories instead.

IOW I feel it is better to get up a terminal with badly looking fonts
than have to wait quarter an hour before being able to do anything,
if a large font directory for any reason has stale or missing cache.

Of course it is even worse to get no fonts at all, as in the case of an
ultimately misconfigured font cache, but should we try to work around
installations broken as much?

Regards,
Rune