Dissecting a Font
In
the font viewer, we see that the Entry’s font is changed with
the -font option using an anonymous array. From
this we know a font consists of the following things:
- Family
The actual name of the font, e.g.,
'Courier','Times', and so on.- Size
The size of the font in points. The larger the size, the larger the text displayed on the screen. A point is 1/72 of an inch. Negative values are interpreted as pixels.
- Weight
Determines if the font is shown boldor not. The value
'normal'means it is not shown bold, and'bold'makes the font thicker.- Slant
Shows straight up and down if
'roman'is used, and slanted if'italic'is used.- Underline
If the value used with
-underlineis true, the text will be underlined. If false, the text will not be underlined.- Overstrike
If true, a line will be drawn through the center of the text.
If you are used to working with fonts on a Unix system, you are probably familiar with X Logical Font Descriptions (XFLD). This is the dash-delimited format used for fonts under X, for example:
*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-*-240-*-*-*-*-*-*
This font description indicates a 24-point bold Helvetica font with Roman slant. The field order is as follows: -foundry-family-weight-slant-sWdth-adstyl-pixelsize-pointsize-resx-resy-spacing-avgWidth-registry-encoding.
When specifying a font in XLFD notation, an asterisk means you don’t care what is used for that value, and the system will choose a default for you.
While a full description of X fonts is beyond ...
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