Comment 20 for bug 475889

The version of Arial Narrow that a lot of people have (the version MS allowed to be redistributed before changing its mind) is clearly case #1. They probably fixed later versions (or relied on their renaming heuristic to hide this fact, reading the MS whitepaper Arrial Narrow almost certainly was one of their primary test cases for heuristical renaming)

But anyway yes there is no good solution short of fixing fonts and apps (an heuristic, by definition, is not a safe solution, it sort of works in most cases and fails horribly in others). And that won't happen by complaining in fontconfig's bugzilla. The people that write font and apps do not read it. If you find a problem font complain at its issuer. If you find a problem app complain at its author. fontconfig can not possibly hide 100% the fact that the OpenType spec has changed over the years. For one thing, the changes in the spec were done because font authors and app authors requested them. So hiding them is punishing good apps and fonts (that use the new spec properly) to avoid fixing bad fonts and bad apps (that try to ignore requirements changed)