[Fontconfig] how to use multiple fonts?

[Federic Zhang]

> The API you were using uses a single font; there isn't (yet?) an API
> within Xft to switch among multiple fonts.  I expected applications to
> want to group glyphs in the same font, but so far that hasn't happened.  I
> may figure out a reasonable interface now.
>
> For multiple font use (which all applications should use), you use
> FcFontSort to compute the list of fonts needed to display as much Unicode
> as you've got fonts for.  The list includes Unicode coverage for each font,
> so you can just walk the list looking for the first font supporting each
> character.
>
> There's a bit more to it; you'll find examples in Mozilla, Qt and Pango at
> this point.  I'd like help defining an appropriate Xft API for this
> operation; it may be as simple as extending an XftFont to support
> additional fonts or perhaps it should just use new APIs.  I don't know
> what's best.

Thanks for this information.  I will refer to the corresponding implemention
in Pango, using low-level FcFontSort is too complicated at least for me.

Regards,
Federic