XFONTSEL(1) - man - phpman

XFONTSEL(1)                            General Commands Manual                           XFONTSEL(1)



NAME
       xfontsel - point and click selection of X11 font names

SYNTAX
       xfontsel [-toolkitoption ...]  [-pattern fontname] [-print] [-sample text] [-sample16 text16]
       [-sampleUCS textUCS] [-scaled]

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 charac‐
       ters 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  se‐
       lect 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 dis‐
       play the selected font if the font has a CHARSET_REGISTRY of  ISO10646,  overriding  the  de‐
       fault.

       The  -scaled  option  enables  the ability to select scaled fonts at arbitrary pixel or point
       sizes.

INTERACTIONS
       Clicking any pointer button in one of the XLFD field names will pop up a  menu  of  the  cur‐
       rently-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 ``*'' en‐
       try in that field.  Unselectable values may be omitted from the menu entirely as a configura‐
       tion  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  applica‐
       tions (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 aver‐
       age width fields.  Selecting a font name with a zero in these positions results in an  imple‐
       mentation-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  (al‐
       though 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 high‐
       lighted 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.  Activat‐
       ing the select widget twice is the only way to cause xfontsel to release the PRIMARY_FONT se‐
       lection.

RESOURCES
       The application class is XFontSel.  Most of the user-interface is configured in  the  app-de‐
       faults 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-de‐
       faults/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.  Equiva‐
               lent 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 sin‐
               gle 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  en‐
               abled.

       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.

FILES
        $XFILESEARCHPATH/XFontSel

SEE ALSO
       xrdb(1), xfd(1)

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 cor‐
       rect 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  se‐
       lection.  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.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 1989, 1991,  X Consortium

       See X(7) for a full statement of rights and permissions.

AUTHOR
       Ralph R. Swick, Digital Equipment Corporation/MIT Project Athena

       Mark Leisher <mleisher AT crl.edu> added the support for the UTF-8 sample text.



X Version 11                               xfontsel 1.0.6                                XFONTSEL(1)