XFONTSEL(1) X Version 11 (Release 5) 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.
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 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
Page 4 (printed 7/20/06)