wtb41 wrote: > Craig Ringer wrote: >> I don't think that's really true except on Mac OS 9 with a font manager >> like Suitcase or ATM installed. Most other OSes don't really draw the >> distinction to the same extent. > > My reply: The System fonts v. Personal font division exists on my Linux > system. For example, > when I enter fonts:/ into Konqueror's location bar, I immediately am > presented with a menu > with 2 options: (1) fonts:/Personal/ and (2) fonts:/System/. Furthermore, > the font installer that > is part of the KDE package also has that dichotomy. One needs SU status to > install system fonts.
That doesn't affect how applications work with those fonts at all, and it's mostly just a user interface difference. You have write permission to ~/.fonts (shown by Konqueror as your personal fonts) and the fonts there are shown by fontconfig only to applications running under your user ID. The system font directories need root permissions, and all users can write to them. To applications, there is no difference between the fonts, and except for installing fonts they're treated no differently by the system. /etc/fonts/fonts.conf (exact path changes by distro alas) controls this behaviour and more. It's also possible to customise fontconfig's behaviour to add more font folders etc using ~/.fonts.conf . -- Craig Ringer
