Can font locations be consolidated?

[Josef Lowder]

.
I just did 'locate fonts | wc' and found that there are 2,598 font files on my
system ... and many of them seem to be duplicates. 

Is there some way to consolidate these?  Why are there so many different font
directories?  Seems excessively cluttered. 

And where are the "hidden" system fonts stored? 

I'm still wrestling with the problem of a very unsatisfactory font (too small,
italic, and a poor font style) showing up as the default font in wine menus
and dialogs (please view this example:
http://www.fixaim.com/temp/winecfg.jpg), and I can't figure out how to get
this fixed. 

Hope somebody can help.