why is the font cache so greedy?

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

So i recently tried out GNUStep.  As I reported in my first mail I ran into
GNUSTep crashing and taking X with it.

After some help from the list the reason found was the font cache was trying to
cache all of my fonts and eventually overloading the X server.  yes, I have
lots of fonts installed.  I maintain the blackbox window manager and often test
how Japanese or Chinese or whatever looks (even if I can not read it).  I also
have numerous little fixed fonts that people often use in themes.  Obviously I
routinely use about 2% of the ones I have installed.

My X server is setup to not have a font server running mostly because it is
over eager to give me huge 100dpi fonts.  Still have not fully understood the
XFree 4 setup nor taken the time.

My question is, why can't the font cache be demand inserted?  Why load up all
of the fonts when only a tiny handful are likely to be used?  if this can not
be done, perhaps the font cache mechanism can somehow count the fonts it is
loading and stop after an arbitrary number.  The solution I was given was to
limit the fonts loaded to the iso 8859-1 char sets using default.  Sure this
works, but more users from distros which install the kitchen sink of X will
appear and be equally puzzled by X crashing.  Not all of them will be willing
to try to get the issue fixed.