In the KDE 3.5 version each family & style combo was given a separate entry - i.e. one for "Times", and one for "Times Italic".
For KDE 4 I wanted to add some simple font management features, but didn't want to overcrowd the interface for the general case of installation and removal. So, when the KDE 4 font installer is started, the user interface appears as:
This shows fonts grouped into families - the number in square brackets represents the number of styles. The list of fonts may also be filtered by font family, or font style. The combobox controls whether personal, system, or all fonts are displayed. To install, or remove, system fonts the user would need to select to display "System Fonts", or "All Fonts", and then they will be prompted to enter their password (if the system is using sudo), or the administrator password. This is required, as kcmshell no longer supports an administrator mode.
The "Settings" menu allows the user to enter the font management mode, and this appears as:
In this mode users are allowed to group their fonts, and enable/disable whole groups of fonts, or individual fonts. Fonts that are disabled are simply hidden from fontconfig, but not actually removed. Using this mechanism, you can have thousands of fonts installed, but only activate those you require at a particular time - speeding up application start-up times.
The filter mechanism is also expanded to allow filtering on; fontconfig match, font file location, font file name, foundry, and writing system. The "FontConfig match" filter will allow you to enter "Sans", and the font installer should display the font that fontconfig would use.
The "Tools" menu is intended to house various font management tools. Currently the only tool implemented is one to find duplicate font files. This will look for scalable fonts that have multiple files associated with them, and also look for the case where duplicate files exist in the same folder but differing only in case (e.g. ~/.fonts/times.ttf, ~/.fonts/Times.TTF). The user is then able to select which, if any, font files they wish to delete.
In the future, probably KDE 4.1, I'd like to allow the possibility to download fonts via GHNS, and add a tool to check the validity of fonts. But, for KDE 4.0 I think I'll just try to iron out as many bugs as possible! :-)