XBanner: Font Tips

# XBanner Font Tips

### Contents

- Font Directories
- Finding Fonts
- Analyzing A Font
- What Else?

### Font Directories

When going to find a font, the first thing you need to do is check where the font directories are located on your X-Server. On my machine, I type xset q like this:

    GGF root 84:~/Xbanner# xset q
    Keyboard Control:
     auto repeat: on key click percent: 0 LED mask: 02000000
     auto repeating keys: 0000000000000000
     0000000000000000
     0000000000000000
     0000000000000000
     bell percent: 50 bell pitch: 400 bell duration: 100
    Pointer Control:
     acceleration: 2/1 threshold: 4
    Screen Saver:
     prefer blanking: yes allow exposures: yes
     timeout: 600 cycle: 600
    Colors:
     default colormap: 0x21 BlackPixel: 1 WhitePixel: 0
    Font Path:
     /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,
     /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/, <= Scalable fonts!
     /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/, <= Scalable fonts!
     /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/,
     /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/,
    Bug Mode: compatibility mode is disabled

### Finding Fonts

If you don't have these, you'll have to install them. The distribution of XFree86 has them as a separate file, so you just need to use the `tar` command to find out exactly which file it is.

If you do have these directories in the font path, you might want to try and use the `xfontsel` utility. This will help you a lot. Once you selected the font you want, there is an option to simply paste the font name with the mouse into any other window.

See the font path at the end of the above example? The `Type1/` and `Speedo/` directories contain scalable fonts. Use '`cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/`' and view the file '`fonts.dir`' in that directory. You will see something like:

    16 <<< number of fonts in this directory
    UTRG____.pfa -adobe-utopia-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    UTI_____.pfa -adobe-utopia-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    UTB_____.pfa -adobe-utopia-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    UTBI____.pfa -adobe-utopia-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    cour.pfa -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
    couri.pfa -adobe-courier-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
    courb.pfa -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
    courbi.pfa -adobe-courier-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
    c0648bt_.pfb -bitstream-charter-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    c0649bt_.pfb -bitstream-charter-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    c0632bt_.pfb -bitstream-charter-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    c0633bt_.pfb -bitstream-charter-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    c0419bt_.pfb -bitstream-courier-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
    c0582bt_.pfb -bitstream-courier-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
    c0583bt_.pfb -bitstream-courier-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
    c0611bt_.pfb -bitstream-courier-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
    ------------ ------------------------------------------------------------
    File Name Font Name

### Analyzing A Font

Let's look at one of these fonts:

`-bitstream-charter-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1`

This is how it looks in the '`fonts.dir`' file. When we want to use a font, some of the font's fields can be specified as wildcards. The 0's specify that this field can be asked-for arbitrarily. This means that if we ask for a font:

`-bitstream-charter-bold-r-normal--100-*-75-75-*-*-iso8859-1`

The X-Server will generate for us a font of 100 pixels size, at 75 dpi resolution.

### What Else?

Another way to find out about the fonts in your system is to query the X-Server by using "xlsfonts". Try to look for fonts with pixel-sizes of 0 (zero) in the output of xlsfonts. These are likely to be scalable.

Notice that some scalable fonts are bitmap scalable fonts, which means they look awful when scaled to very large sizes. You really do want to use those `Type1` and `Speedo` fonts!

So... All you need to do is experiment.

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