http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16325
--- Comment #150 from Michal Suchanek hramrach@gmail.com 2012-02-07 12:59:12 CST --- I don't know when windows is generating the links.
I would expect they are generated at locale change which is rather rare.
Somebody could perhaps run some tests with changing locale using the control panel and some of those locale-compatibility applications.
However, running those tests does not change anything about the fundamental difference between Windows and Wine: on Windows you never need to change those keys. They are set to the expected value, and application not working with that value is considered broken.
On wine no font is ever 100% compatible with the Windows fonts. This may change when the system font is generated correctly and users install widows TrueType fonts but in general it's not the case so users *might* want to change the font links to test different settings, and then Wine should probably not replace the settings on every start.
If you are confident that the settings you pick are always the correct ones then go ahead and make wine rewrite them on every start.
The advantage of your solution is that it adds to any existing links. That way existing links to user's preferred font should continue to work. Even if the user copied links for Microsoft fonts directly from Windows and the Microsoft fonts do not exist in Wine, the Wine generated links should work. That way if somebody finds application that looks for the key they can import the exact value the application is looking for and still get the Wine font links. If somebody finds such application it can be added as option to winetricks I guess.