Two questions for too many fonts and Fontypython

[Donn Ingle <donn.ingle@xxxxxxxxx>]

If one uses apps like Inkscape, there are font-choosers (I guess that's my name for them) - dialogues that let you choose a font - which are very cluttered by dozens of fonts that have nothing to do with one's task at hand.

For example, in Inkscape on my current machine, I see:

  mry_KacstQurn

  ..

  STIXGeneral

  STIXIntegralsD

  ..

  Tlwg Mono

  ..

  Umpush

  ..

And it goes on and on .. (Libre Office shows all the same fonts.)

As a designer, I'd like to have a filtered view of those fonts. At least! Some way to hide all the system-installed stuff.

I presume fontconfig is being used under the hood and that all the many packages in a modern distro are bringing various fonts along as they require. This is fine: each app gets what it needs to work.

Hello list,

The problem is when a human wants to select certain fonts they are overwhelmed by this noise.

For my sins I wrote and (glacially) maintain Fonty Python which is based on the idea of sets of fonts on-demand. It let's users group fonts (from paths on their drive) into named sets which are then installed or removed on-demand.

Nutshell: Fonty links or removes links to fonts paths in "~/.fonts"

This means a person can prepare a little for a job. Install the desired fonts and then start work, say in Inkscape or Blender.

The problem is that with every single font on the entire system listed in the Inkscape font-chooser, it's almost hopeless to find the few that you want to use.

I don't suppose this is a fontconfig problem, per se, but more one for the gui people in GTK-etc-land.

However: Q: Is there some mechanism in fontconfig that could allow me (as a normal user, on the command line) to filter or suppress the population of fonts that applications are going to offer me when they run?

(I'm picturing some temporary measure that I can reverse when I'm done.)

Q2: How should I proceed with Fonty's basic mechanism? i.e. Should I continue to use "~/.fonts", or switch to "~/.local/share/fonts" or what?

Apologies if these are dumb questions, or OT, or I've asked them before. My memory is not reliable. I mean no disrespect.

Thanks,

/d
https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/fontypython/

(Fonty is very old now and more than a little creaky. I am working on a new release, but I am also old and creaky.)

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