

If you need a refresher on fonts, read on, as we illustrate and explain each of the elements that make up the font name.įigure 5-1. If you are already familiar with font characteristics, skip ahead to the section “Font Name Wildcarding” later in this Chapter for some tips and tricks. Upon close examination, this rather verbose name contains a great deal of useful information: the font’s developer, or foundry (Adobe), the font family (Courier), weight (bold), slant (oblique), set width (normal), size of the font in pixels (10), size of the font in tenths of a point (100 tenths of a point, thus 10 points), horizontal resolution (75-dpi), vertical resolution (75-dpi), spacing (m, for monospace), average width (60-measured in tenths of a pixel, thus 6 pixels), and character set (iso8859-1).Īs mentioned earlier, font name wildcarding can eliminate a lot of the unnecessary detail. When you run xlsfonts, you’ll get an intimidating list of names similar to the name in Figure 5-1. The xlsfonts client can be used to display the names of all the fonts available on your server. (By the end of this chapter, you should have that knowledge.)

Unfortunately, this completeness makes them somewhat difficult to work with, at least until you learn what all the parts of the names mean, and get a handle on which parts you need to remember, and which you can safely ignore. As we’ll see in a moment, these logical font names allow for complete specification of all of the characteristics of each font. However, starting with Release 3, a new logical font naming convention was adopted. For example, the file 8x13.snf contained a font named 8x13. In Release 2 and earlier, fonts were simply identified by the name of the file in which they were stored, minus the. (This name can then be pasted onto a command line, into a resource file, etc.) Font Naming Conventions
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We’ll also talk about the font search path (the directories where the font files are stored), and how to define aliases for font names.įinally, we’ll talk about some of the utilities X provides for dealing with fonts: Then, we’ll talk about how to use font name wildcards to simplify font specification.

Along the way, we’ll acquaint you with the appearance of some of the basic font families (groups of related fonts), and the various permutations (such as weight, slant, and point size) within each family. First, we’ll explain the font naming convention in detail. In this chapter, we’re going to try to make sense out of the sometimes bewildering jungle of information about fonts under X. Imagine typing this command line to create an xterm window whose text is to be displayed in 14-point Courier bold: This wouldn’t be so bad if a typical font name wasn’t mind-bending at first glance.

However, for the clients in the X distribution, you are generally limited to selecting fonts via command line options or resource specifications. Of course, there will no doubt soon be many applications such as word processors and publishing packages that provide a simple interface for selecting fonts. * Instead, X has a fairly complex font naming system (which, like most things about X, is designed for maximum flexibility rather than for simplicity or ease of use). Unfortunately, for the most part, there are no simple “font menus” like there are on systems such as the Macintosh. For example, you can choose the font used for the text in twm menus or in xterm windows. Many clients allow you to specify the font used to display text in the window, in menus and labels, or in any other text fields. Release 2 versus Subsequent Release Fonts Utilities for Displaying Information about Fonts This chapter also describes how to use the xlsfonts, xfd, and xfontsel clients to list, display, and select available screen fonts. After acquainting you with some of the basic characteristics of a font, this chapter describes the rather complex font naming conventions and how to simplify font specification. This chapter describes what you need to know in order to select display fonts for the various client applications.
