[bug#39602] Generate font catalogues for the X server

[Marius Bakke]

Ivan Kozlov <kanichos@yandex.ru> writes:

> Actually, I am sending this as a patch.
>
> This should produce a "share/fontpath.d" directory in the profile which is a 
> font catalogue as described in Xserver(1). Then the X server font path can be 
> set to include this catalogue and it will find the installed fonts. This 
> concerns all legacy X11 applications using the core fonts system, and most 
> importantly xterm.
>
> The hook ‘fonts-dir-file’ was originally added for this purpose as the 
> comments can tell; you would include e. g. "share/fonts/X11/misc" from the 
> profile in the font path, which is a union directory with symbolic links to 
> fonts that want to install there and a fonts.dir file describing all of them. 
> This has not been working for ages, since the X.org server stopped following 
> symbolic links to font files for security reasons. It should be removed.

Thanks for this investigation, and the patch!

Overall it LGTM, but I wonder how useful it is, seeing as no one has
reported the issue.  Would it make sense to add hooks in the
configuration system instead for setting font path and a font union?

A patch to remove the legacy broken 'fonts-dir-file' generation from
(guix profiles) would be welcome, by the way.

Thanks,
Marius

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