XFONTSEL(1)
NAME
xfontsel - point and click selection of X11 font names
SYNTAX
xfontsel [-toolkitoption ...] [-pattern fontname]
[-print] [-sample text] [-sample16 text16] [-noscaled]
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 -noscaled option disables the ability to select scaled
fonts at arbitrary pixel or point sizes. This makes it
clear which bitmap sizes are advertised by the server, and
can avoid an accidental and sometimes prolonged wait for a
font to be scaled.
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 val-
ues 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 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. Select-
ing 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 PRI-
MARY text selection as well as the PRIMARY_FONT selection.
This then allows you to paste the string into other appli-
cations. The select button remains highlighted to remind
you of this fact, and de-highlights when some other appli-
cation takes the PRIMARY selection away. The select wid-
get 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 PRI-
MARY_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 stan-
dard output and the resulting window will be nearly incom-
prehensible.
Most of the significant parts of the widget hierarchy are
documented in the app-defaults file (normally
<XRoot>/lib/X11/app-defaults/XFontSel, where <XRoot>
refers to the root of the X11 install tree.)
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 con-
tain 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 pixel-
SizeList 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.ShowUnse-
lectable; where N is replaced with the field num-
ber (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 unse-
lectable entries, '*menu.options.showUnse-
lectable: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 corre-
spond 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.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1989, 1991, X Consortium
See X(1) for a full statement of rights and permissions.
AUTHOR
Ralph R. Swick, Digital Equipment Corporation/MIT Project
Athena