Ubuntu Manpage: xfontsel - point and click selection of X11 font names

NAME

       xfontsel - point and click selection of X11 font names

SYNTAX

       xfontsel  [-toolkitoption  ...]   [-pattern  fontname]  [-print] [-sample text] [-sample16
       text16] [-sampleUCS textUCS] [-scaled]

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 -sampleUCS option specifies the sample text encoded in the UTF-8 form to be used to
display the selected font if the font has a CHARSET_REGISTRY of ISO10646, overriding the
default.

The -scaled option enables the ability to select scaled fonts at arbitrary pixel or point
sizes.

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 /etc/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

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,  X Consortium

       See X(7) for a full statement of rights and permissions.

AUTHOR

       Ralph R. Swick, Digital Equipment Corporation/MIT Project Athena

       Mark Leisher <mleisher@crl.nmsu.edu> added the support for the UTF-8 sample text.