[XeTeX] Text output garbled after system update -- your ideas?

[Kārlis Repsons]

On Thursday 14 April 2011 14:52:53 Ulrike Fischer wrote:
> Am Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:51:21 +0000 schrieb Kārlis Repsons:
> > So throwing texmf-dist/fonts/{opentype,truetype,type1}/public/libertine
> > out and running `fc-cache -fsv` as root gave me a temporary fix.
> > I write so, because I'll have to figure out still how to actually manage
> > fonts, taking in account XeLaTeX specifics...
> 
> Yes it is not easy. texlive and miktex can't start to simply install
> fonts in the system folders. So if fonts come with the tex system
> they end in the texmf tree - and this can lead to double versions.

One thing confuses me:
if I install and use Linux Libertine with help of my packaging system (system-
wide), it gives just about what I desire. System folders have nothing really 
more than the actual fonts and a few collateral files. But if I look into 
texlive-module-libertine-2010.tar.xz, there are various (quite many) other 
files of type .sty, .inc, .fd and others... What for?

So the question is:
if I choose to:
* keep contents of a full TeXLive installation;
* not link it's fonts for global use with fontconfig;
* maintain my own folder of fonts,
can it work without conflicts and is there a risk to loose some functionality?

(I tried it out a little and it seems to work just fine, but who knows..?)

> The case is different for different font formats: pdftex/latex+dvips
> still needs type1 fonts. So removing them could be a problem.
Those, which live within TeXLive installation? Or Type1 as such is considered 
obsolete/obsoleting??
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