[Fontconfig] Fontconfig language update proposal

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le jeudi 28 novembre 2019 à 08:07 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot a écrit :
> 
> > > 2. whenever hindsight shows the low-level sequence needed to
> > > achieve a
> > > generic goal needs tweaking, the whole configuration needs
> > > rewriting,
> > > instead of just adjusting things at the engine level.
> > 
> > I'm sorry, I don't get it. can you elaborate more details and
> > specifics?
> 
> The whole locale-specific debacle for example, where you've wanted
> for
> years to try alternative approaches, and you can't because neitheir
> you
> nor other font packagers have any wish to rewrite all existing files.
> 
> That's 100% due to a bad abstraction level in fontconfig, where
> instead
> of telling the engine what locale a font file is good for (letting
> the
> engine compute the appropriate priorization strategy), users have to
> hardcode a specific handling strategy in their config files.

Another example: during the discussion in the issue tracker you
suggested using "prepend" in while discussing some legacy syntax
examples. And that's not how the recommended pattern in fontpackages
(that you also maintain) were written

I can tell you, none of the font packagers I know care about this kind
of low-level detail. Just let us declare what other fonts are similar
to a font we package. You can hash down the best way to edit fonts as a
result in the engine all you want. Don't force us to decide this kind
of thing. *We don't care*.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot