XFONTSEL(1)                 General Commands Manual                XFONTSEL(1)



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  but-
       ton.

       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  arbi-
       trary 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  previ-
       ous  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 selec-
       tion.  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 particu-
       lar  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 applica-
       tion 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 PRI-
       MARY_FONT selection.

RESOURCES
       The application class is XFontSel.  Most of the user-interface is  con-
       figured  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 use-
               ful 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 con-
               tains 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.Simple-
               Menu.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.showUnse-
               lectable: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 other-
       wise 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.



X Version 11                    xfontsel 1.0.5                     XFONTSEL(1)
