This is not the exciting recap of my travels that you’re all waiting for. This is my contribution to the improvement of the world, specifically that part of the world that keeps Xft apps — such as my beloved Thunderbird — from crashing like a crashy thing because the font cache is out of date. You have to use a top-secret @fc-list@ incantation

bq.. interlude

< blizzard> because the man page is useless
< shaver> utterly
< shaver> not just "somewhat incomplete" useless, but rather "I could cut
          you and leave you to bleed to death by the side of the road"
          useless

p. to list the files that are expected to be part of your font set, and then yell about the ones that are missing. I present unto you:

==

: thunderbird; fc-list "" file | less | cut -f1 -d: | \
          while read F; do if [ ! -f $F ]; then echo $F missing; fi; done
/usr/share/fonts/ja/TrueType/kochi-mincho.ttf missing
/usr/share/fonts/ja/TrueType/kochi-gothic.ttf missing
: tmp; sudo rm /usr/share/fonts/ja/TrueType/fonts.cache-1
: tmp; sudo fc-cache

(Repeat the @rm@ bit for @fonts.cache-1@ files in any other directories implicated.)