The X Window System uses Logical Font Descriptions instead of font names. Since font names are not in fact logical, this doesn't work very well, and frankly ends up in a mess. None the less, if you download this short shell script, xlfd, and run chmod +x xlfd, you can use it to list fonts.
If you run xlfd -help you'll see this:
xlfd: X11 logical font description (XLFD) manipulation
usage: xlfd [options] command [...]
Commands are:
help -- prints this summary; -usage prints a shorter version.
print -- print the corresponding XLFD pattern
echo -- like print, but includes program options such as -bg.
xlsfonts, xfd, xfontsel -- runs the coresponding program
Options to specify Font Properties:
| foundry name | (e.g. bitstream) |
| family name | (e.g. charter) |
| weight w | (e.g. bold, medium) |
| slant spec | (r i or o for roman/italic/oblique) |
| setwidth name | (normal, condensed, etc.) |
| addedstyle name | (serif, sans, '' for none) |
| pixelsz N | (normally leave this as *) [also: pixelsize] |
| pointsize N | (font size in units of 1/727.2 of an inch, e.g. 120) |
| resx N | (x dots per inch, horizontal screen resolution) |
| resy N | (y dots per inch, vertical screen resolution) |
| res | (sets both x and y res, e.g. -res 100) |
| space name | (m = monospaced, p = proportional, c = cell) |
| averagewidth N | (average character width in pixels) |
| registry rrr | (usually iso8859 or adobe) |
| encoding name | (usually 1 or 2 (for iso8859) or fontspecific) |
| charset rrr-enc | (sets both registry and encoding, e.g. iso8859-1) |
Program Options:
-bg colourspec; -fg colourspec; -title ttl; -xrm res -option '-yyy zzz'
-geom[etry] geomspec
-class name; -name name
The font pattern right now is:
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
If you want to use outline fonts on X, you will need a version of X that supports them. That includes all versions of OpenWindows, X11R5, recent versions of XF86, and some others.
There are three ways taht outline fonts might be supported.
If you are using a font server, xfstt is a popular one. Install that (e.g. with addpkg or using /usr/ports on FreeBSD), and see the readme file.
The usual steps for setting up an X font server are as follows:
clone-self = off use-syslog = off client-limit = 20 catalogue = /home/lee/lib/ttfonts error-file = /tmp/ttfs.errors # in decipoints default-point-size = 140 # x,y default-resolutions = 100,100,75,75Run the font server, perhaps like this:
You will need a special directory to contain all your outline fonts. This should notbe your normal X font directory, as otherwise you will have to set it up again when you install a new version of X.
You will need a file called fonts.scale in the directory; then inside the directory, in a teminal/shell, run mkfontdir to generate the file fonts.dir.
The fonts.scale file looks like this:
3 0rga.ttf -brendel-Mackintosh SF-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 39smooth.ttf -Fanatico-39 Smooth-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 72786___.ttf -letraset-DfAttitudesLET Plain:1.0-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecificThe number 3 here is teh number of lines that follow. On each following line there are two fields: the name of a file that contains a TrueType or Type1 font, and then the X name that will be used. You have to use X names in this form, with foundry name, font name, and so forth. If it's not a text font, use the encoding name adobe-fontspecific as shown.
You can use PostScript Type 1 fonts and, with some font servers, TrueType fonts. Don't expect the world's highest quality unless you are using a commercial font server, because the free font servers aren't all that good yet.
A Type 1 font usually has a name ending in .pfa or .pfb indicating Adobe's portable font ascii and binary formats, respectively. Not all font servers can use pfb files, so you may need to use Lee Hetherington's t1utils or pfb2ps to convert from pfb to pfa.
TrueType fronts from Microsoft Windows should work directly if your font server supports them. Macintosh TrueType fonts generally require more work, but sually these are simply automatic conversions from Type 1 PostScript in the first place. Use the Type 1 font instead.
runes: fonts for Elder Futhark and Ogham runes.
xfonttool is written for the XView toolkit with DevGuide; you are on your own. I have included a SPARC binary that may run.
The main font choosing window:
Sample text
A single screen shot showing the main window, a font sample window, the font path dialogue and a font size properties window can be perceived here.
