A few comments for the reported problem:
First, the change of the default font is expected, as the results of
the upstream fontconfig file. This file has two major purposes:
1. enable wqy bitmap song even the bitmap fonts are globally disabled
2. create a synthetic font for generic aliases with the following
specifications:
for Chinese 9pt-12pt: use wqy bitmaps
for Chinese other sizes: use default preferred vector Chinese
fonts(uming/ukai)
for non CJK characters, use default preferred vector Latin fonts
the motivations of using this config file is detailed in Fedora's font list:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2007-November/msg00062.html
after discussions, a more robust fontconfig file can be found at:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2007-December/msg00002.html
the screenshots of the en and zh desktops can be found at
http://wenq.org/gallery/albums/userpics/10002/F8-wqy-newconfig_enUS.png
http://wenq.org/gallery/albums/userpics/10002/F8-wqy-newconfig_zhCN.png
The synthetic font described above is effectively equivalent to
replacing the
Firefly bitmaps in Uming by wqy-bitmap song (these two fonts can not be
merged due to licenses). If the non-CJK glyphs were correctly displayed
with Latin vector fonts, as designed, then there should be no other
differences.
Although this can also be achieved with distribution-specific font
preference list (such as language-selector.conf in Ubuntu),
using package-specific fontconfig file to redefine sans/serif/mono and
create synthetic fonts will do harm, IMO, to user's controllability:
who wanted to install xfonts-wqy may already prefer wqy bitmaps
over firefly bitmaps; those who do not like wqy bitmaps may simply
remove it and return to system default.
However, Debian may have different fontconfig files to Fedora/Ubuntu
(only Bitstream vera, and no Dejavu LCG?), and the font rendering
may be different from what I got (Fedora8 in my
above discussions). You can either twig the config file and create a
patch if needed to achieve all the designed specifications, or delete
the synthetic font section to keep with system default order
(65-nonlatin.conf I guess).
Again, my feeling is that setting one font as default using self-contained
config file is nothing logically wrong or undermines user's controllability
(actually, I think it saves people's time for setting it as default
everywhere).
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