[Fontconfig] Query for default config without force initialization if absent

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi Francesco,

You might find this blogpost of mine useful:

  http://mces.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-to-use-custom-application-fonts.html

Cheers,

behdad
http://behdad.org/


On Sat, Feb 12, 2022 at 3:28 AM Francesco Pretto <ceztko at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Feb 2022 at 21:09, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> <ldo at geek-central.gen.nz> wrote:
> >
> > It seems to me, an application shouldn’t go messing about with a user’s
> > default settings. Create a custom application-specific configuration, by
> > all means, and base it on the default as appropriate. But don’t go
> > replacing the default -- leave that up to user-controlled configuration
> > tools.
>
> You talk about "an application" missing my use case, which I actually
> didn't talk about: I have a PDF manipulation library[1] that needs to
> use fontconfig for regular font lookups. My idea is that my library
> code should attempt first to check if an existing default
> configuration exists, and if it does it should use that. If it does
> not exist I want to chose to let fontconfig to default initialize one
> or create a custom one that fit better the purpose of my PDF library.
> You are probably right that I should not mess with the default
> configuration by pushing my custom one as the global default (even if
> this affects only the process where my shared library was
> initialized). Still a method to know the current default configuration
> (even if that is null) would be good to have (the mentioned
> FcConfigGetCurrentDirect) and allow me to better decide what to do in
> the library code. An "application", as you say, using my PDF library
> would be still able/free to push a default configuration externally,
> indirectly controlling the behavior of my PDF library and other user
> libraries using fontconfig, or it can control directly the behavior of
> the PDF library with regard to font lookups. I hope my use case is
> clear. Summarizing: I now agree with you that I should not push a
> custom default fontconfig configuration in my library code, but I
> should still be able to know if a default configuration exists or not.
>
> Regards,
> Francesco
>
> [1] https://github.com/pdfmm/pdfmm
>
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