XFONTSEL(1) X11 R4.11MU05 XFONTSEL(1)
NAME
xfontsel - point & click interface for selecting 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.
The font specifier may be made the PRIMARY (text) selection by
activating the select button. Specifying -print on the command line
causes the font specifier to be written to standard output only if it
has been made the PRIMARY (text) selection by a previous activation
of the select button.
The help button provides an explanation of the various fields that
make up the font specifier.
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 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 the app-defaults file (normally /usr/lib/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.
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
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 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
See X(1) for a full statement of rights and permissions.
AUTHOR
Ralph R. Swick, Digital Equipment Corporation/MIT Project Athena
Licensed material--property of copyright holder(s)