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Name

mkfontdir - create fonts.dir file from directory of font files

Synopsis

mkfontdir [ directory-names ]

Description

For each directory argument, mkfontdir reads all of the font files in the directory searching for properties named "FONT", or (failing that) the name of the file stripped of its suffix. These are used as font names, which are converted to lower case and written out to the file "fonts.dir" in the directory along with the name of the font file.

The kinds of font files read by mkfontdir depends on configuration parameters, but typically include PCF (suffix ".pcf"), SNF (suffix ".snf"), BDF (suffix ".bdf"), F3 (suffix ".f3b") and F3 bitmap (suffix ".fb"). If a font exists in multiple formats, mkfontdir will first choose fonts in fonts in the following order: F3, PCF, SNF, BDF and finally F3 bitmap (.fb).

Scalable Fonts

Because scalable font files do not usually include the X font name, the fonts.dir file in directories containing such fonts must be edited by hand to include the appropriate entries for those fonts. However, when mkfontdir is run, all of those additions will be lost, so be careful.

There is an alternative to editing "fonts.dir" file by hand. If there exists a "fonts.scale" file in any directory of the font-path, mkfontdir will copy the contents of this file to "fonts.dir" file. Any changes can therefore be safely made to "fonts.scale" and when mkfontdir is run in that directory, the changes will be reflected in the "fonts.dir" file also.

For example, the directory /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo contains a "fonts.scale" file, which is hand created. The format of a "fonts.scale" file is as follows: 


    <num-of-entries>
    filename    XLFD name

Note: F3 scalable fonts do contain enough information for mkfontdir to be able to construct the X font name (XLFD name). Therefore, the above does not apply to F3 format font files.

Font Name Aliases

The file "fonts.alias" which can be put in any directory of the font-path is used to map new names to existing fonts, and should be edited by hand. The format is straight forward enough, two white-space separated columns, the first containing aliases and the second containing font-name patterns.

When a font alias is used, the name it references is search for in the normal manner, looking through each font directory in turn. This means that the aliases need not mention fonts in the same directory as the alias file.

To embed white-space in either name, simply enclose them in double-quote marks, to embed double-quote marks (or any other character), precede them with back-slash: 


"magic-alias with spaces"    "\"font\name\" with quotes"
regular-alias            fixed

If the string "FILE_NAMES_ALIASES" stands alone on a line, each file-name in the directory (stripped of it’s suffix) will be used as an alias for that font.

Usage

Both the X server and the Font Server look for "fonts.dir" and "fonts.alias" files in each directory in the font path each time it is set (see xset(1) ).

See Also

X11(7) , Xserver(1) , xset(1)

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