Font files seem to be picked up by KDE Font Management if they are put in either ~/.local/share/fonts (i.e. $XDG_DATA_HOME/fonts) or ~/.fonts, as well as the system font directories of course.
If fonts are installed within Font Management in System Settings by choosing “Install from File…”, the font files are placed in ~/.fonts. Isn’t the use of this folder deprecated? In which case, can this be considered a bug?
Ok, this is considered a bug, there are two long-standing bug reports for it for kcm_fontinst
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=442976
and for kfontview
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=367650
Dare I say it, this seems like a simple enough change (changing a few paths) that maybe even I could do it myself?
There’s guides already on how to contribute to KDE generally, so I can look at those, but does anyone have tips/pointers/warnings on things that might trip me up while fixing this? Or things that will make it a more complicated change than it appears?
Since Plasma font settings and fontconfig both already pick up fonts placed in $XDG_DATA_HOME/fonts without issue, I can’t currently envisage why changing the install location should cause issues (without having looked at the code yet)…
Please do go ahead and try! Often obvious small bugs are still there simply because no one else already noticed it or had the time to care enough about fixing it over other priorities.