Solved my own problem. I ran fc-cache and now xterm kicks off in under a second... I have: <dir>/cygdrive/c/windows/fonts/</dir> In my /etc/fonts/local.conf so there's quite a few fonts to scan, which I guess explains the delay. Question: the man page for fontconfig (man fonts-conf) states that ~/.fonts-cache-* "is automatically maintained by fontconfig". Does this mean that I don't have to remember to rerun fc-cache when I install new fonts?
I still wonder whether its right that xterm is linked over 2000 times to cygXt-6.dll Lev