Changing fonts

About fonts

The supported fonts on your system form a font database. By default, all font files are located in subdirectories of the /usr/lib/X11/fonts directory. The five standard subdirectories are:

misc: fixed-width fonts and cursor and glyph fonts
75dpi: fixed- and variable-width fonts for 75 dots per inch (dpi) displays
100dpi: fixed- and variable-width fonts for 100 dots per inch (dpi) displays
Speedo: contains outline fonts for the Bitstream(r) Speedo rasterizer. A single font face, in normal, bold, italic, and bold italic, is provided, contributed by Bitstream, Inc.
Type1: scalable, PostScript Type1 fonts

Each of these directories includes a fonts.dir file, which together provide a database for the X server. When the X server needs a font, it uses these files to locate it.

The fonts.dir files contain two columns of information: the first column lists all of the font files in the directory and the second column lists the full font names associated with the font files. The first line in fonts.dir lists the number of fonts available in that directory.

By default, the directories misc, 75dpi, 100dpi, Speedo, and Type1, in /usr/lib/X11/fonts constitute the font search path. The X server uses the search path to determine where on the system it should look for font files. If needed, other directories can be added to the font search path. For information about adding new directories to the X server's font search path, see ``Adding a font to your system''.

The font search path is defined by the /usr/bin/startx script. You can see the font search path by typing the following line at the shell prompt:

xset q

Fonts can be specified with a full name, wildcards, or aliases. For example, a 14-point courier bold font could be specified in any of the following ways:

   -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--14-140-75-75-m-90-iso8859-1
   '*courier-bold-r*140*'
   courierB14

The first line is the full name of the font, the second line uses wildcards, and the third line uses an alias.