[Fontconfig] confused about <alias> <prefer>

[Alan Chandler]

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On Wednesday 26 Feb 2003 12:15 am, Keith Packard wrote:
> Around 20 o'clock on Feb 25, Alan Chandler wrote:
> > Is the functionality what would be expected.  Would it not be better for
> > the at least the <alias> functions of <prefer> bind at the same strength
> > as the alias it is prepended to, otherwise it just doesn't do its job
>
> The strong/weak binding was added to resolve issues with language vs
> family matching.  Strongly bound family names are more important in
> matching than language which is more important that weakly bound family
> names.  Before this change, language was actually *more* important than
> family which prevented applications from being able to match family names
> which didn't support the document language, even if explicitly selected by
> the user.

The effect I am seeing is related actually totally unrelated to language.  =
The=20
matching "difference" score for these are 0

>
> The <prefer> binding is generally used when resolving the generic family
> names (sans-serif, serif, monospace) and hence the names added should be
> "weak" so that they don't end up overriding the "real" names provided by
> applications.

Yes - I full understand the use of weak binding for the generic names - I w=
as=20
actually tracking my problems through the kde and the qt library and that=20
quite sensibly uses "Style Hints" and converts these to the generic names. =
It=20
expects these generic names to have less weight than the application=20
specified

>
> I'm afraid the strong/weak binding lets the matching mechanism "show
> through" the configuration language more than I'd like, but any
> significant change in the existing mechanism would make for some
> interesting bug reports from existing users.
>

This sounds a real shame - but are you sure existing users would actually=20
notice anything.  For a weak binding alias family name my proposal was that=
=20
the prefered family name would still be prepended as weak.  This is the sam=
e=20
as it works at the moment.

If there is strong binding alias family name my proposal is that the prefer=
=20
would prepend as strong.  At the moment it prepends as weak, and so the=20
matching mechanism effectively ignores this prepending.  This was the probl=
em=20
I was having.

The obvious question is why would someone use the alias prefer combination =
and=20
expect it to perform as it currently does for a strongly bound alias family=
=20
and therefore submit lots of bug reports.   I am asking this question with=
=20
the naievity of someone who is newly looking at the issue so forgive me if =
I=20
have totally misunderstood and there would be many users out there for whom=
 a=20
change like this would cause problems.

=20

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Alan Chandler
alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk
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