xfontsel
point and click selection of X11 font names
see also :
xrdb - xfd
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examples
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description
The
xfontsel application provides a simple way to display
the fonts known to your X server, examine samples of each,
and retrieve the X Logical Font Description
("XLFD") full name for a font.
If
-pattern is not specified, all fonts with XLFD
14-part names will be selectable. To work with only a subset
of the fonts, specify -pattern followed by a
partially or fully qualified font name; e.g.,
’’-pattern *medium*’’ will select
that subset of fonts which contain the string
’’medium’’ somewhere in their font
name. Be careful about escaping wildcard characters in your
shell.
If
-print is specified on the command line the selected
font specifier will be written to standard output when the
quit button is activated. Regardless of whether or
not -print was specified, the font specifier may be
made the PRIMARY (text) selection by activating the
select button.
The
-sample option specifies the sample text to be used
to display the selected font if the font is linearly
indexed, overriding the default.
The
-sample16 option specifies the sample text to be used
to display the selected font if the font is matrix encoded,
overriding the default.
The
-sampleUCS option specifies the sample text encoded
in the UTF-8 form to be used to display the selected font if
the font has a CHARSET_REGISTRY of ISO10646, overriding the
default.
The
-scaled option enables the ability to select scaled
fonts at arbitrary pixel or point sizes.
copyright
Copyright 1989, 1991, X Consortium
See X(7) for a full statement of rights and permissions.
files
$XFILESEARCHPATH/XFontSel
interactions
Clicking any pointer button in one of the XLFD field names will
pop up a menu of the currently-known possibilities for that
field. If previous choices of other fields were made, only values
for fonts which matched the previously selected fields will be
selectable; to make other values selectable, you must deselect
some other field(s) by choosing the ’’*’’ entry in that field.
Unselectable values may be omitted from the menu entirely as a
configuration option; see the ShowUnselectable resource,
below. Whenever any change is made to a field value,
xfontsel will assert ownership of the PRIMARY_FONT
selection. Other applications (see, e.g., xterm) may then
retrieve the selected font specification.
Scalable fonts come back from the server with zero for the pixel
size, point size, and average width fields. Selecting a font name
with a zero in these positions results in an
implementation-dependent size. Any pixel or point size can be
selected to scale the font to a particular size. Any average
width can be selected to anamorphically scale the font (although
you may find this challenging given the size of the average width
menu).
Clicking the left pointer button in the select widget will
cause the currently selected font name to become the PRIMARY text
selection as well as the PRIMARY_FONT selection. This then allows
you to paste the string into other applications. The
select button remains highlighted to remind you of this
fact, and de-highlights when some other application takes the
PRIMARY selection away. The select widget is a toggle;
pressing it when it is highlighted will cause xfontsel to
release the selection ownership and de-highlight the widget.
Activating the select widget twice is the only way to
cause xfontsel to release the PRIMARY_FONT selection.
resources
The application class is XFontSel. Most of the
user-interface is configured in the app-defaults file; if this
file is missing a warning message will be printed to standard
output and the resulting window will be nearly incomprehensible.
Most of the significant parts of the widget hierarchy are
documented in /etc/X11/app-defaults/XFontSel,
Application specific resources:
cursor (class Cursor)
Specifies the cursor for the application window.
pattern (class Pattern)
Specifies the font name pattern for selecting a subset of
available fonts. Equivalent to the -pattern option. Most
useful patterns will contain at least one field delimiter; e.g.
’’*-m-*’’ for monospaced fonts.
pixelSizeList (class PixelSizeList)
Specifies a list of pixel sizes to add to the pixel size menu, so
that scalable fonts can be selected at those pixel sizes. The
default pixelSizeList contains 7, 30, 40, 50, and 60.
pointSizeList (class PointSizeList)
Specifies a list of point sizes (in units of tenths of points) to
add to the point size menu, so that scalable fonts can be
selected at those point sizes. The default pointSizeList contains
250, 300, 350, and 400.
printOnQuit (class PrintOnQuit)
If True the currently selected font name is printed to
standard output when the quit button is activated. Equivalent to
the -print option.
sampleText (class Text)
The sample 1-byte text to use for linearly indexed fonts. Each
glyph index is a single byte, with newline separating lines.
sampleText16 (class Text16)
The sample 2-byte text to use for matrix-encoded fonts. Each
glyph index is two bytes, with a 1-byte newline separating lines.
scaledFonts (class ScaledFonts)
If True then selection of arbitrary pixel and point sizes
for scalable fonts is enabled.
Widget specific resources:
showUnselectable (class ShowUnselectable)
Specifies, for each field menu, whether or not to show values
that are not currently selectable, based upon previous field
selections. If shown, the unselectable values are clearly
identified as such and do not highlight when the pointer is moved
down the menu. The full name of this resource is
fieldN.menu.options.showUnselectable, class
MenuButton.SimpleMenu.Options.ShowUnselectable; where N is
replaced with the field number (starting with the left-most field
numbered 0). The default is True for all but field 11 (average
width of characters in font) and False for field 11. If you never
want to see unselectable entries,
’*menu.options.showUnselectable:False’ is a reasonable thing to
specify in a resource file.
syntax
xfontsel [-toolkitoption ...] [-pattern
fontname] [-print] [-sample text]
[-sample16 text16] [-sampleUCS
textUCS] [-scaled]
bugs
Sufficiently
ambiguous patterns can be misinterpreted and lead to an
initial selection string which may not correspond to what
the user intended and which may cause the initial sample
text output to fail to match the proffered string. Selecting
any new field value will correct the sample output, though
possibly resulting in no matching font.
Should be able
to return a FONT for the PRIMARY selection, not just a
STRING.
Any change in a
field value will cause xfontsel to assert ownership
of the PRIMARY_FONT selection. Perhaps this should be
parameterized.
When running on
a slow machine, it is possible for the user to request a
field menu before the font names have been completely
parsed. An error message indicating a missing menu is
printed to stderr but otherwise nothing bad (or good)
happens.
The
average-width menu is too large to be useful.
see also
xrdb ,
xfd
author
Ralph R. Swick,
Digital Equipment Corporation/MIT Project Athena
Mark Leisher
<mleisher[:at:]crl.nmsu[:dot:]edu> added the support for the
UTF-8 sample text.