I'm trying to understand how fontconfig decides what to return for a given pattern. I've read a fair chunk of the user documentation at [1], but I don't think it's complete enough. I've got a simple set up: a clean install of arch-linux + fontconfig, noto-fonts. I would like `fc-match monospace` to give "Noto Mono". I currently only have Noto {Mono,Sans,Serif} and some pixel fonts installed. So I'm expecting `fc-match monospace` to receive "Noto Mono" or one of the pixel fonts. But what I actually get is "Noto Sans". So I add: <alias> <family>Noto Mono</family> <default> <family>monospace</family> </default> </alias> But I still get Sans. I've tried with 'binding="same"' and with <accept> instead of <default> with no succuess. I've also tried after deleting all the other fontconfig .conf files and only setting the above. Can I get fontconfig to pick Noto Mono without forcing it with <prefer>? I would like to avoid <prefer> because if a user prefers a very different font, and something needs extra glyphs, I want font-config to pick a donor font based on its own logic. As it happens, font-config looks to be pretty poor at picking sensible donor fonts for glyphs in my use case, so maybe I shouldn't be too worried about that (if I install DejaVu Sans, disable its configs, and then `fc-match "Noto Sans" -s`, I get Noto Sans, then DejaVu Sans, then the Noto Sans variants). I would appreciate insight into why this is so. [1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/fontconfig/fontconfig-user.html _______________________________________________ Fontconfig mailing list Fontconfig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/fontconfig