[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#669003: fontconfig: TEXMF fonts status and activation

[Norbert Preining]

Package: fontconfig
Version: 2.8.0-3.1
Severity: normal

Hi fontconfig maintainers,
Hi pkg-fonts maintainers,

it seems that there is something strange with respect to fontconfig
and texmf trees. I see the fontconfig has an interest (trigger)
in /usr/share/texmf/fonts, but AFAIS an installation into this directory
does not change anything, which is not surprising since in all of
/etc/fonts/ and below nothing about texmf is mentioned (besides two
dirs in avail.d/30-defoma for tex-gyre and lmodern).

So I would like to ask a few questions:
- is the current behaviour on purpose, and if yes, why is there
  a triggered interest in /usr/share/texmf/fonts?
- if my observation is wrong and fonts installed there (/u/s/t/f) 
  actually work, could you also please add
  	/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/fonts
  to the list?
- if fonts are not actually supported, should we (texlive-*) ship
  a /etc/fonts/avail.d/ config file activating the ttf and otf
  fonts we are shipping, i.e., simply adding the paths
  	/usr/share/texmf/fonts/{opentype,truetype}
	/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/fonts/{opentype,truetype}
  to the search paths?
- if we do the last step, how are duplicated fonts handled?
  (we have many fonts that are linked from their original location
  into the texmf trees)
 
Thanks for any hint and explanation

Norbert

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (499, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.4.0-rc2+ (SMP w/2 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages fontconfig depends on:
ii  fontconfig-config  2.8.0-3.1
ii  libc6              2.13-27
ii  libexpat1          2.1.0-1
ii  libfontconfig1     2.8.0-3.1
ii  libfreetype6       2.4.9-1
ii  zlib1g             1:1.2.6.dfsg-2

fontconfig recommends no packages.

Versions of packages fontconfig suggests:
ii  defoma  0.11.12

-- no debconf information