Fontconfig - Nov 2005 - What can Fonconfig really do for average user??

Around 9 o''clock on Feb 23, "Randy Burgess" wrote:
> My question is - for a beginning Linux user, is Fontconfig worth the
> trouble? 
Fontconfig centralizes and regularizes font configuration for a wide 
selection of applications.  As such, it helps the user only in so far as 
applications care to take advantage of it.

Furthermore, it has nothing to do with rendering of the glyphs themselves; 
it''s just a library for locating and selecting fonts.  However, many 
applications using fontconfig also use the Xft library which hooks the 
high-quality FreeType2 rasterizer (well, high quality if you turn on the 
byte code interpreter) to X applications.  Such applications will have 
anti-aliased text and text optimized for LCD screens, so they will look 
much better than older applications.

I don''t know if the SuSE version of Mozilla is built with fontconfig
and
Xft support; such code is in Mozilla CVS, but isn''t universally
deployed
yet.

-keith

I am just starting to learn Linux, having struggled for the past two weeks
with my new SuSE 8.1 installation to get it to look less crappy in the font
department. Towards that end I have installed the latest release candidate
version of Free86, along with KDE 3.1 and QT 3.1. Fonts in KDE and Opera
6.11 look better now, though still not up to the caliber of MS Windows;
fonts in Mozilla look worse than before for some reason, but that''s OK
since
Opera is so much better than Mozilla anyway.

My question is - for a beginning Linux user, is Fontconfig worth the
trouble? Will it help me get a better-looking font display than that which I
can achieve with the setup described above? If so, how?! Does it somehow
enable otherwise unused capabilities for a more attractive display, or is it
merely a means (or potential means, even worse) of fine-tuning what is
already there? Is it something that''s better left alone my folks like
me
until people like KDE start providing a GUI interface to it? I have read the
existing descriptions, and looked at the FAQ, but they are written at too
high a technical level to address such basic questions. Perhaps all of this
is obvious to XFree86 devotees, but it''s not to anyone walking in on it
cold. I have done some Python and PHP scripting, so I''m not totally
ignorant
of fiddling with scripts and such - but I''m unable to discern what the
goal
of the fiddling would be in this case.

Assuming this is a valid question, I volunteer to transcribe the answer and
submit it (after someone reviews it for accuracy) to the Wiki FAQ, if that
would help.