XLIB Programming Manual, Rel. 5, Third Edition

Appendix A. Specifying Fonts

This appendix describes how to define the names of the default fonts your application will use if the user does not override them. This chapter explains the font service architecture and the use of the scalable fonts. Font service is entirely transparent to the X programmer—it is impossible for the programmer to tell whether a given font came from a font server or from a font file read by the X server. Although there are no new functions or datatypes related to font service, the architecture overview and font server configuration information may be of interest.

This appendix describes how to specify fonts in application code or in resource files. For all the details on the conventions for font naming, see Appendix M, Logical Font Description Conventions, of Volume Zero, X Protocol Reference Manual (as of the second printing).

A.1 Font Specification

Most applications that display text allow the user to specify the font via either the font resource or the -fn and -font command line options.

The X Window System supports many different display fonts with different sizes and type styles. (These are screen fonts and are not to be confused with printer fonts.)

Since Release 3, Adobe Systems, Inc. and Digital Equipment Corporation have jointly contributed several families of screen fonts (Courier, Helvetica, New Century Schoolbook, Symbol, and Times) in a variety of sizes, styles, and weights for 75-dots-per-inch (dpi) monitors. Bitstream, Inc. contributed its Charter ...