Fontconfig/Xft

— Lists all font faces.

— Lists font faces that cover Hindi.

— Lists the filename and spacing value for each font face. ":" is an empty pattern that matches all fonts.

From

In Xft 2.x, adding a directory such as /opt/fonts to the configuration file automatically adds its subdirectories, such as /opt/fonts/TrueType. Thus, if you want to use subdirectories, you need only specify the parent of all the subdirectories. On the other hand, specifying the subdirectories individually gives you greater control: you can go into the configuration file to remove just one subdirectory if there's a problem. You can also add some directories system-wide and leave others as optional additions for your users.

The standard font directories are (default in Debian):

After you've saved your changes, the fonts should become available to ordinary users, as described shortly. If you do nothing more, though, user applications will trigger fontconfig to scan the font directories and create index files in users' home directories. This task may cause delays the first time users run an Xft-enabled application after you make changes. To avoid this problem, type fc-cache, optionally followed by the path to the directories you want scanned. This action creates the font index files (called fonts.cache-1) in each font directory you created.

Most /etc/fonts/fonts.conf files include a line that loads the contents of the user's ~/.fonts.conf file, if it's present. This line enables ordinary users to make changes to their font configurations by editing this file just as the system administrator can edit /etc/fonts/local.conf.

Because features such as preference for or against font smoothing are very subjective, this feature can be very handy, but it requires users to understand the font configuration file format, at least to a small extent.

Merely adding fonts is a bit simpler: most /etc/fonts/fonts. conf files include a font directory listing for ~/.fonts. This entry tells the system to use fonts stored in the .fonts subdirectory of a user's home directory. The result is that users can install fonts merely by copying them to their own fonts subdirectory. When users run Xft-enabled programs, those programs will cause fontconfig to generate an index file called ~/.fonts. cache-1, which holds information on the fonts in the ~/.fonts directory, as well as in any system font directories that haven't been properly indexed.

Some GUI font configuration tools, such as the font installer provided with KDE, edit the user's ~/.fonts.conf file so that it points to font directories unique to the font installer. In the case of KDE's font installer, the directory is ~/.kde /share/fonts, with subdirectories for TrueType and Type 1 fonts.

Once you've installed fonts or changed your font configuration, it's time to run some tests. You can do this by running any Xft-enabled program that supports arbitrary font selection.

To check basic font installation, try the GNOME Font Preferences tool, which you can launch by typing gnome-font-properties in an xterm. (You don't need to use GNOME as your default environment to use this program.) The tool is designed to set GNOME's default fonts, but it loads fairly quickly and enables you to see what fonts are installed, which makes it handy for testing font installations.

documented on: 2008-06-09

Subject: Re: Font changes after dist-upgrade to Firefox2/IceWeasel Newsgroups: gmane.linux.debian.user Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:07:41 +0000

Firefox uses fontconfig, so the fc-match command should help, e.g.,

Liam O'Toole