[MPlayer-users] Acceptable way to disable fontconfig caching...

[wm4]

On Thu, 7 Jan 2016 20:09:05 -0500
Josh <joshf87 at live.com> wrote:

> I've been figuring some way to deal with fontconfig's annoying cache, a 
> final nail in the coffin being that when updating the fontconfig library 
> older caches had to be cleaned out or else it would keep scanning every 
> single time MPlayer is run.
> 
> Compiling without fontconfig, or using -nofontconfig, works fine with 
> embedded fonts but then it wouldn't be possible to specify system fonts, 
> in that case MPlayer can only use subfont.ttf.
> 
> It seems removing '<dir>WINDOWSFONTDIR</dir>' from fonts.conf removes 
> the scanning and caching, and still retains the ability to use system 
> fonts. I tested with an external .ass changing it to numerous different 
> system fonts with and without '<dir>WINDOWSFONTDIR</dir>' (and removing 
> caches between tests of course) and there was no difference except an 
> ominous warning message:
> 
> 
> 
> Fontconfig failed to select a font. Trying without fontconfig...
> Fontconfig failed to select a font. Trying without fontconfig...
> 
> [ass] fontselect: (Wingdings, 400, 0) -> Wingdings-Regular, 0, 
> Wingdings-Regular
> 
> 
> 
> I am using the latest libass from git. I'm thinking of pushing this 
> change to my builds and even comment out the 'Fontconfig failed' 
> message, if there isn't anything I overlooked. Thoughts?

Note that libass can run without fontconfig now (and should be doing
that by default). But MPlayer itself has a dependency on fontconfig
AFAIK.