On my Ubuntu system, if inkscape is run by root, after wiping out the ~/.config/inkscape directory, it comes up with "sans-serif" as the default font, and that is what is stored in ~/.config/inkscape/preferences.xml. When the same thing is done from a regular user account it comes up as "Sans", and that goes into preferences.xml instead. For the life of me I can't see why this happens, since unless I'm missing something the protections on all of the font directories are set world readable, and the results for both accounts for

fc-list | grep -i sans

and

fc-list | grep -i serif

and

fc-match 'sans-serif'

are identical.

Sans is also strange because it isn't present elsewhere in the font list, only at the top, above the divider line. I understand that means there isn't actually a "Sans" font on the machine, and that fontconfig is picking something else to fill in that space, but still looks odd.

Anyway, this also makes me wonder if when Inkscape hits a font like "sans-serif", which on my system only shows the "normal" type, the pull down list should look like:

normal (black) italics (grayed out and not selectable) bold (grayed out and not selectable) bold-italics (grayed out and not selectable)

Other special types that are present in some fonts (condensed) can be added, and the end user probably will never notice when they are missing, but a font format list that does not include the standard ones looks strange to me.

Regards,

David Mathog mathog@...1176... Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech