I'm looking to see if there is a better solution to this problem than my current implementation. Currently, I search certain predefined system paths for font files ("C:\Windows\Fonts\" on Windows and "/System/Library/Fonts/", "/Library/Fonts/" on OS X), then open each file with Freetype to determine the font's family and face names, then cache this information, along with the file's path, for later use. The problem is that this is really slow (a couple of seconds).
I've looked at the available functionality on OS X and Windows and the only font management tools allow you to list the installed font names but don't allow you to get the path on the system where the font file is stored. Therefore, there's no way for me to use a library like Freetype to open the file.
Am I missing something or is there no better way to do this?