man > xfontsel(1)

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.

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 1.1.0                                XFONTSEL(1)