[Scribus] Linux's font system

[Martin Costabel]

Gregory Pittman wrote:
> wtb41 wrote:
>> The Mac system as I understand it handles fonts far more simply than Linux.
>> The Mac
>> system puts all of its system fonts in one folder--the System/Fonts folder.
>> Scribus tells 
>> me that the system fonts on my Linux box are in 8 separate folders. Can you
>> please 
>> explain to me the reason for 8 folders rather than 1 folder? 
>>   
> Others may have better answers than I, but my sense of this is that the 
> fonts in Linux come from a variety of separate projects, each of which 
> has had its own approach to storing fonts.
> Linux is just an OS, not that plus a number of strictly coordinated 
> apps. Therefore, there has never been any person or group to say, "fonts 
> will go here and only here."

What is "the Mac system"?

The old MacOS was far simpler than modern OSs and at its origin had a 
flat file system. Folders were an afterthought. There are still 
remainders of this on MacOSX where the system keeps a list of all 
applications and of all fonts, no matter where they are installed.

On MacOSX with its Unix underpinnings and its NeXTstep heritage, you 
have at least as much complexity as on Linux or more.

Here is, for example, a paragraph from the file /etc/fonts/fonts.conf on 
MacOSX 10.4:

<!-- Font directory list configured on Mon Nov  6 17:03:54 PST 2006 -->

         <dir>/Library/Fonts</dir>
         <dir>/Network/Library/Fonts</dir>
         <dir>/System/Library/Fonts</dir>
         <dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
         <dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
         <dir>/var/root/Library/Fonts</dir>
         <dir>~/.fonts</dir>

In addition to the directories listed there, fonts can be found in the 
user's $HOME/Library/Fonts and $Home/.fonts directories. This makes 
already 9 directories that are searched by default. On my system, I have 
additional fonts in subdirectories of /sw/lib/X11/fonts/

-- 
Martin