[Fontconfig] performance issue questions

[L. A. Walsh]

Jerry Casiano wrote:
> On Wed, 2016-11-23 at 21:46 -0800, L. A. Walsh wrote:
>   
>> Most any X program that has the font name encoded in a config file
>> for one,
>>     
>
> If you're specifying a font name, then the filepath doesn't matter.
>   
---
    That's true, but its hard to find a utility to rename
the font-filenames according to their internal name.  I did run
across one but it only worked for ascii or maybe western character-set
based names.  Really mangled fonts from other languages.
>   
>>  and second, most windows programs that rely on the user to pick a 
>> font
>>     
>
> Selecting a font from a list of thousands of families with some
> containing 20-30 variations sounds fun. 
>   
----
    Actually you usually just have to pick the family name and have
style sheets select variations based on the usage.


> Also, the actual filepath wouldn't or at least shouldn't matter there
> either.
>   
---
    Didn't say it would.
>   
>>> Workarounds include technology *growing* to handle larger 
>>>       
>> collections and workloads.
>>     
>
> Sounds like that's the only solution that would satisfy you, so no
> point in even trying to suggest changes that might ease the pain till
> that happens. 
>   
----
   Uh.... I mentioned the problem over 2 years ago on this list.  I've
ignore the problem and tried to make due by not touching the fonts
on linux for the most part.  But after a couple of years, it seems
like no progress is being made.  I threw out several questions
that I don't know the answers to -- and you seem to be getting defensive
from the first response, in asking me "why do you have all those fonts" --
rather than giving any answers to the questions -- like whether or not
the 32-bit data is needed on a 64-bit only system, or caching by inode
and storing names.
> I mean, if you just have to have 15,000 duplicates and 20,000+ font
> files active at all times then it is what it is.
>   
====
    I didn't create the duplicates.  In fact I *used* to try to delete
them, but various programs and sources tended to duplicate them.  Linux
was especially bad in creating symlinks for every font that had spaces
in it -- those were read by other programs that got confused about which
was the real name.  Eventually I stopped trying.   If you want to tell
me font-config can rename all of them to eliminate the dups, that's
great.  Also trying to rename fonts on windows can also be problematic --
as some of them are considered "system files" -- remove them (or rename 
them)
and your system won't boot.
>>     If windows could handle 25K fonts 7 years ago (as some 
>> smaller number of grouped font families), I don't see why 
>> solutions today can't be faster and more capable.
>>     
>
> That's interesting...
>
> Good for them.
> That OS would normally slow to a crawl with even a fraction of that
> figure.
---
   That happened in XP somewhat, and win98 had horrible limitations, but
in win7 -- no slowdown except at times when you go to display the whole
list -- can take maybe 30 seconds -- that's tolerable.  12 minutes -- not
so much.

>  That's actually the main reason font management tools came to
> be, in order to avoid the poor performance and usability caused by
> having large amounts of fonts active.
>   
----
    Yes, such tools used to be necessary, but I don't see as many
these days and none that work with the OS.


    With 64-bit memory, throwing a Gig or so at a font DB in memory
would be nothing on many machines.  I throw 4-8G at various server
programs to allow them to be fast, but you can't do that as easily
with 32-bit constraints.  Many distros aren't shipping 32-bit binaries
any more.  So my asking if the 32-bit font-caches even needed to be
built on machines not using 32-bit progs for graphics (or anything else).

Seems like a reasonable question, but instead of any of my questions being
answered I get asked why I should be allowed or supported in having so
many...  If it took 30 seconds to cook the fonts or if it
happened in background -- wouldn't be as much of an issue, but instead
of improvement, I am feeling a defensive posture about even asking
questions about what parts are needed and whether some things are
necessary, or whether or not things could be made parallel.  Those
are reasonable questions.

So why am I getting what seems to be defensiveness?