Windows: Inkscape still sees deactivated ('uninstalled') fonts, uses old font versions

[Hachmann]

From the forums:

On Windows (8.1, 10), with (at least) Inkscape 0.92.2 and 0.92.3, it seems that when a font is deleted, it isn't removed from the disk.

Quoting TylerDurden from the forum:

"To even see the font(s), one needs to use explorer as a network access to \\COMPUTERNAME\C$\Windows\Fonts\. ("COMPUTERNAME" is whatever yours is.) These are not typical hidden files, which can be shown with a directory (folder) setting."

And when a font has been updated, the old version isn't deleted, but a new file with a new name is created:

Quoting pherim from the forum:

"the problem apparently was that for some reason, every time I re-installed the font, windows would create a new file with a number attached to the file name inside the fonts folder instead of overwriting the old one."

(this is from someone creating fonts, and creating updated versions of the same font, then wanting to test it)

Apparently, other software handles the hidden/renamed fonts correctly - users named Gimp, LibreOffice, Open Office (and Word).

Inkscape still sees deleted fonts, and also only uses the oldest version of a font (making it hard for font makers to test their fonts).

Related forum threads:
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=18770
https://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php?topic=1157

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

This is not really something Inkscape can "fix":
- Most likely it's an issue in fontconfig and needs to be fixed
  (and reported) upstream.
- The only other option is to reactivate the native pango_win32 back-end.
  In principle this works (I did some initial experiments locally and have it
  mostly working), but it does not support any of the OpenType font features
  we advertised lately.

We could thinks about offering it as an option, but unless we find someone with a deep understanding of Windows' native font capabilities who would be able to implement what's currently missing it won't come close to what the fontconfig/freetype2 back-end can currently do.

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Thanks for the info, Eduard!

fontconfig seems to sort the bug reports well - I'm unsure where to post... lol (couldn't find this reported already, weirdly).

Would this be the 'fontscan' component (which currently says it has zero bugs)?
(https://bugs.freedesktop.org/buglist.cgi?product=fontconfig&component=fc-scan&resolution=---)

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

I'm actually not sure myself - fc-cache is the program that builds the list of fonts available on a system (and that's basically what Inkscape offers to the user in the end), so that's at least not completely wrong.

Further than that I don't have much knowledge on fontconfig internals nor on how Windows handles fonts, which is basically why I did not try to file a report about this myself. (I also did not notice the described problem on my own machine, so I have not much to work with here...)

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Thank you, @Eduard Braun, I'll try fc-cache then. They might already know about the problem, or could otherwise be able to give more info. We have some long-term users on the forums who have the issue, and would probably be willing to give more info if required.

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Mmh. I've just reconsidered this, as I found a bug that you're subscribed to, that says that Gimp takes a long time to start due to building the cache. And Gimp does not have those problems that I described above, according to the affected users, although it seems to use the same routines to build their fonts list.

So maybe it could be an Inkscape issue after all?... Leaving this here, for someone who knows more to take it up.