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XFONTSEL(1)                                                                                      XFONTSEL(1)



NAME
       xfontsel - point and click selection of X11 font names

SYNTAX
       xfontsel  [-toolkitoption ...]  [-pattern fontname] [-print] [-sample text] [-sample16 text16] [-sam-pleUCS [-sampleUCS
       pleUCS 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  PRI-MARY_FONT PRIMARY_FONT
       MARY_FONT selection.  Other applications (see, e.g., xterm) may then retrieve the selected font spec-ification. specification.
       ification.

       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  /usr/X11/lib/X11/app-defaults/XFontSel, /usr/X11/lib/X11/appdefaults/XFontSel,
       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 con-tains contains
               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; MenuButton.SimpleMenu.Options.ShowUnselectable;
               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.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,  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 1.0.2                                    XFONTSEL(1)

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