[7] Fontconfig is typically used on graphical Linux (and other Unix-like) desktops, such as Xorg and Wayland, where it remains an important part of handling fonts.

[8] However, it is also sometimes used on other platforms, notably including Windows versions of software that use Pango for laying out and rendering text, such as GIMP.

[9] End-users can use fontconfig, directly or indirectly, to customize and configure fonts on the system.

Applications can use fontconfig in two ways: To perform font matching, fontconfig stores typesetting information about all of the installed fonts, including the name of the font family, style, weight, dots per inch (DPI), and Unicode coverage.

The document type definition (DTD) for fontconfig files is normally located at /etc/fonts/fonts.dtd.