path: root/doc/fontconfig-user.txt

                               fonts-conf

Name

   fonts.conf -- Font configuration files

Synopsis

   /etc/fonts/fonts.conf
   /etc/fonts/fonts.dtd
   /etc/fonts/conf.d
   ~/.fonts.conf.d
   ~/.fonts.conf

Description

   Fontconfig is a library designed to provide system-wide font
   configuration, customization and application access.

Functional Overview

   Fontconfig contains two essential modules, the configuration
   module which builds an internal configuration from XML files
   and the matching module which accepts font patterns and returns
   the nearest matching font.

Font Configuration

   The configuration module consists of the FcConfig datatype,
   libexpat and FcConfigParse which walks over an XML tree and
   amends a configuration with data found within. From an external
   perspective, configuration of the library consists of
   generating a valid XML tree and feeding that to FcConfigParse.
   The only other mechanism provided to applications for changing
   the running configuration is to add fonts and directories to
   the list of application-provided font files.

   The intent is to make font configurations relatively static,
   and shared by as many applications as possible. It is hoped
   that this will lead to more stable font selection when passing
   names from one application to another. XML was chosen as a
   configuration file format because it provides a format which is
   easy for external agents to edit while retaining the correct
   structure and syntax.

   Font configuration is separate from font matching; applications
   needing to do their own matching can access the available fonts
   from the library and perform private matching. The intent is to
   permit applications to pick and choose appropriate
   functionality from the library instead of forcing them to
   choose between this library and a private configuration
   mechanism. The hope is that this will ensure that configuration
   of fonts for all applications can be centralized in one place.
   Centralizing font configuration will simplify and regularize
   font installation and customization.

Font Properties

   While font patterns may contain essentially any properties,
   there are some well known properties with associated types.
   Fontconfig uses some of these properties for font matching and
   font completion. Others are provided as a convenience for the
   applications' rendering mechanism.
  Property        Type    Description
  --------------------------------------------------------------
  family          String  Font family names
  familylang      String  Languages corresponding to each family
  style           String  Font style. Overrides weight and slant
  stylelang       String  Languages corresponding to each style
  fullname        String  Font full names (often includes style)
  fullnamelang    String  Languages corresponding to each fullname
  slant           Int     Italic, oblique or roman
  weight          Int     Light, medium, demibold, bold or black
  size            Double  Point size
  width           Int     Condensed, normal or expanded
  aspect          Double  Stretches glyphs horizontally before hinting
  pixelsize       Double  Pixel size
  spacing         Int     Proportional, dual-width, monospace or charcel
l
  foundry         String  Font foundry name
  antialias       Bool    Whether glyphs can be antialiased
  hinting         Bool    Whether the rasterizer should use hinting
  hintstyle       Int     Automatic hinting style
  verticallayout  Bool    Use vertical layout
  autohint        Bool    Use autohinter instead of normal hinter
  globaladvance   Bool    Use font global advance data
  file            String  The filename holding the font
  index           Int     The index of the font within the file
  ftface          FT_Face Use the specified FreeType face object
  rasterizer      String  Which rasterizer is in use
  outline         Bool    Whether the glyphs are outlines
  scalable        Bool    Whether glyphs can be scaled
  scale           Double  Scale factor for point->pixel conversions
  dpi             Double  Target dots per inch
  rgba            Int     unknown, rgb, bgr, vrgb, vbgr,
                          none - subpixel geometry
  lcdfilter       Int     Type of LCD filter
  minspace        Bool    Eliminate leading from line spacing
  charset         CharSet Unicode chars encoded by the font
  lang            String  List of RFC-3066-style languages this
                          font supports
  fontversion     Int     Version number of the font
  capability      String  List of layout capabilities in the font
  embolden        Bool    Rasterizer should synthetically embolden the f
ont

Font Matching

   Fontconfig performs matching by measuring the distance from a
   provided pattern to all of the available fonts in the system.
   The closest matching font is selected. This ensures that a font
   will always be returned, but doesn't ensure that it is anything
   like the requested pattern.

   Font matching starts with an application constructed pattern.
   The desired attributes of the resulting font are collected
   together in a pattern. Each property of the pattern can contain
   one or more values; these are listed in priority order; matches
   earlier in the list are considered "closer" than matches later
   in the list.

   The initial pattern is modified by applying the list of editing
   instructions specific to patterns found in the configuration;
   each consists of a match predicate and a set of editing
   operations. They are executed in the order they appeared in the
   configuration. Each match causes the associated sequence of
   editing operations to be applied.

   After the pattern has been edited, a sequence of default
   substitutions are performed to canonicalize the set of
   available properties; this avoids the need for the lower layers
   to constantly provide default values for various font
   properties during rendering.

   The canonical font pattern is finally matched against all
   available fonts. The distance from the pattern to the font is
   measured for each of several properties: foundry, charset,
   family, lang, spacing, pixelsize, style, slant, weight,
   antialias, rasterizer and outline. This list is in priority
   order -- results of comparing earlier elements of this list
   weigh more heavily than later elements.

   There is one special case to this rule; family names are split
   into two bindings; strong and weak. Strong family names are
   given greater precedence in the match than lang elements while
   weak family names are given lower precedence than lang
   elements. This permits the document language to drive font
   selection when any document specified font is unavailable.

   The pattern representing that font is augmented to include any
   properties found in the pattern but not found in the font
   itself; this permits the application to pass rendering
   instructions or any other data through the matching system.
   Finally, the list of editing instructions specific to fonts
   found in the configuration are applied to the pattern. This
   modified pattern is returned to the application.

   The return value contains sufficient information to locate and
   rasterize the font, including the file name, pixel size and
   other rendering data. As none of the information involved
   pertains to the FreeType library, applications are free to use
   any rasterization engine or even to take the identified font
   file and access it directly.

   The match/edit sequences in the configuration are performed in
   two passes because there are essentially two different
   operations necessary -- the first is to modify how fonts are
   selected; aliasing families and adding suitable defaults. The
   second is to modify how the selected fonts are rasterized.
   Those must apply to the selected font, not the original pattern
   as false matches will often occur.

Font Names

   Fontconfig provides a textual representation for patterns that
   the library can both accept and generate. The representation is
   in three parts, first a list of family names, second a list of
   point sizes and finally a list of additional properties:
        <families>-<point sizes>:<name1>=<values1>:<name2>=<values2>...

   Values in a list are separated with commas. The name needn't
   include either families or point sizes; they can be elided. In
   addition, there are symbolic constants that simultaneously
   indicate both a name and a value. Here are some examples:
  Name                            Meaning
  ----------------------------------------------------------
  Times-12                        12 point Times Roman
  Times-12:bold                   12 point Times Bold
  Courier:italic                  Courier Italic in the default size
  Monospace:matrix=1 .1 0 1       The users preferred monospace font
                                  with artificial obliquing

   The '\', '-', ':' and ',' characters in family names must be
   preceded by a '\' character to avoid having them
   misinterpreted. Similarly, values containing '\', '=', '_', ':'
   and ',' must also have them preceded by a '\' character. The
   '\' characters are stripped out of the family name and values
   as the font name is read.

Debugging Applications

   To help diagnose font and applications problems, fontconfig is
   built with a large amount of internal debugging left enabled.
   It is controlled by means of the FC_DEBUG environment variable.
   The value of this variable is interpreted as a number, and each
   bit within that value controls different debugging messages.
  Name         Value    Meaning
  ---------------------------------------------------------
  MATCH            1    Brief information about font matching
  MATCHV           2    Extensive font matching information
  EDIT             4    Monitor match/test/edit execution
  FONTSET          8    Track loading of font information at startup
  CACHE           16    Watch cache files being written
  CACHEV          32    Extensive cache file writing information
  PARSE           64    (no longer in use)
  SCAN           128    Watch font files being scanned to build caches
  SCANV          256    Verbose font file scanning information
  MEMORY         512    Monitor fontconfig memory usage
  CONFIG        1024    Monitor which config files are loaded
  LANGSET       2048    Dump char sets used to construct lang values
  OBJTYPES      4096    Display message when value typechecks fail

   Add the value of the desired debug levels together and assign
   that (in base 10) to the FC_DEBUG environment variable before
   running the application. Output from these statements is sent
   to stdout.

Lang Tags

   Each font in the database contains a list of languages it
   supports. This is computed by comparing the Unicode coverage of
   the font with the orthography of each language. Languages are
   tagged using an RFC-3066 compatible naming and occur in two
   parts -- the ISO 639 language tag followed a hyphen and then by
   the ISO 3166 country code. The hyphen and country code may be
   elided.

   Fontconfig has orthographies for several languages built into
   the library. No provision has been made for adding new ones
   aside from rebuilding the library. It currently supports 122 of
   the 139 languages named in ISO 639-1, 141 of the languages with
   two-letter codes from ISO 639-2 and another 30 languages with
   only three-letter codes. Languages with both two and three
   letter codes are provided with only the two letter code.

   For languages used in multiple territories with radically
   different character sets, fontconfig includes per-territory
   orthographies. This includes Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Pashto,
   Tigrinya and Chinese.

Configuration File Format

   Configuration files for fontconfig are stored in XML format;
   this format makes external configuration tools easier to write
   and ensures that they will generate syntactically correct
   configuration files. As XML files are plain text, they can also
   be manipulated by the expert user using a text editor.

   The fontconfig document type definition resides in the external
   entity "fonts.dtd"; this is normally stored in the default font
   configuration directory (/etc/fonts). Each configuration file
   should contain the following structure:
        <?xml version="1.0"?>
        <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
        <fontconfig>
        ...
        </fontconfig>

<fontconfig>

   This is the top level element for a font configuration and can
   contain <dir>, <cache>, <include>, <match> and <alias> elements
   in any order.

<dir>

   This element contains a directory name which will be scanned
   for font files to include in the set of available fonts.

<cache>

   This element contains a file name for the per-user cache of
   font information. If it starts with '~', it refers to a file in
   the users home directory. This file is used to hold information
   about fonts that isn't present in the per-directory cache
   files. It is automatically maintained by the fontconfig
   library. The default for this file is
   ``~/.fonts.cache-<version>'', where <version> is the font
   configuration file version number (currently 2).

<include ignore_missing="no">

   This element contains the name of an additional configuration
   file or directory. If a directory, every file within that
   directory starting with an ASCII digit (U+0030 - U+0039) and
   ending with the string ``.conf'' will be processed in sorted
   order. When the XML datatype is traversed by FcConfigParse, the
   contents of the file(s) will also be incorporated into the
   configuration by passing the filename(s) to
   FcConfigLoadAndParse. If 'ignore_missing' is set to "yes"
   instead of the default "no", a missing file or directory will
   elicit no warning message from the library.

<config>

   This element provides a place to consolidate additional
   configuration information. <config> can contain <blank> and
   <rescan> elements in any order.

<blank>

   Fonts often include "broken" glyphs which appear in the
   encoding but are drawn as blanks on the screen. Within the
   <blank> element, place each Unicode characters which is
   supposed to be blank in an <int> element. Characters outside of
   this set which are drawn as blank will be elided from the set
   of characters supported by the font.

<rescan>

   The <rescan> element holds an <int> element which indicates the
   default interval between automatic checks for font
   configuration changes. Fontconfig will validate all of the
   configuration files and directories and automatically rebuild
   the internal datastructures when this interval passes.

<selectfont>

   This element is used to black/white list fonts from being
   listed or matched against. It holds acceptfont and rejectfont
   elements.

<acceptfont>

   Fonts matched by an acceptfont element are "whitelisted"; such
   fonts are explicitly included in the set of fonts used to
   resolve list and match requests; including them in this list
   protects them from being "blacklisted" by a rejectfont element.
   Acceptfont elements include glob and pattern elements which are
   used to match fonts.

<rejectfont>

   Fonts matched by an rejectfont element are "blacklisted"; such
   fonts are excluded from the set of fonts used to resolve list
   and match requests as if they didn't exist in the system.
   Rejectfont elements include glob and pattern elements which are
   used to match fonts.

<glob>

   Glob elements hold shell-style filename matching patterns
   (including ? and *) which match fonts based on their complete
   pathnames. This can be used to exclude a set of directories
   (/usr/share/fonts/uglyfont*), or particular font file types
   (*.pcf.gz), but the latter mechanism relies rather heavily on
   filenaming conventions which can't be relied upon. Note that
   globs only apply to directories, not to individual fonts.

<pattern>

   Pattern elements perform list-style matching on incoming fonts;
   that is, they hold a list of elements and associated values. If
   all of those elements have a matching value, then the pattern
   matches the font. This can be used to select fonts based on
   attributes of the font (scalable, bold, etc), which is a more
   reliable mechanism than using file extensions. Pattern elements
   include patelt elements.

<patelt name="property">

   Patelt elements hold a single pattern element and list of
   values. They must have a 'name' attribute which indicates the
   pattern element name. Patelt elements include int, double,
   string, matrix, bool, charset and const elements.

<match target="pattern">

   This element holds first a (possibly empty) list of <test>
   elements and then a (possibly empty) list of <edit> elements.
   Patterns which match all of the tests are subjected to all the
   edits. If 'target' is set to "font" instead of the default
   "pattern", then this element applies to the font name resulting
   from a match rather than a font pattern to be matched. If
   'target' is set to "scan", then this element applies when the
   font is scanned to build the fontconfig database.

<test qual="any" name="property" target="default" compare="eq">

   This element contains a single value which is compared with the
   target ('pattern', 'font', 'scan' or 'default') property
   "property" (substitute any of the property names seen above).
   'compare' can be one of "eq", "not_eq", "less", "less_eq",
   "more", or "more_eq". 'qual' may either be the default, "any",
   in which case the match succeeds if any value associated with
   the property matches the test value, or "all", in which case
   all of the values associated with the property must match the
   test value. When used in a <match target="font"> element, the
   target= attribute in the <test> element selects between
   matching the original pattern or the font. "default" selects
   whichever target the outer <match> element has selected.

<edit name="property" mode="assign" binding="weak">

   This element contains a list of expression elements (any of the
   value or operator elements). The expression elements are
   evaluated at run-time and modify the property "property". The
   modification depends on whether "property" was matched by one
   of the associated <test> elements, if so, the modification may
   affect the first matched value. Any values inserted into the
   property are given the indicated binding ("strong", "weak" or
   "same") with "same" binding using the value from the matched
   pattern element. 'mode' is one of:
  Mode                    With Match              Without Match
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
  "assign"                Replace matching value  Replace all values
  "assign_replace"        Replace all values      Replace all values
  "prepend"               Insert before matching  Insert at head of list
  "prepend_first"         Insert at head of list  Insert at head of list
  "append"                Append after matching   Append at end of list
  "append_last"           Append at end of list   Append at end of list

<int>, <double>, <string>, <bool>

   These elements hold a single value of the indicated type.
   <bool> elements hold either true or false. An important
   limitation exists in the parsing of floating point numbers --
   fontconfig requires that the mantissa start with a digit, not a
   decimal point, so insert a leading zero for purely fractional
   values (e.g. use 0.5 instead of .5 and -0.5 instead of -.5).

<matrix>

   This element holds the four <double> elements of an affine
   transformation.

<range>

   This element holds the two <int> elements of a range
   representation.

<charset>

   This element holds at least one <int> element of an Unicode
   code point or more.

<langset>

   This element holds at least one <string> element of a
   RFC-3066-style languages or more.

<name>

   Holds a property name. Evaluates to the first value from the
   property of the font, not the pattern.

<const>

   Holds the name of a constant; these are always integers and
   serve as symbolic names for common font values:
  Constant        Property        Value
  -------------------------------------
  thin            weight          0
  extralight      weight          40
  ultralight      weight          40
  light           weight          50
  book            weight          75
  regular         weight          80
  normal          weight          80
  medium          weight          100
  demibold        weight          180
  semibold        weight          180
  bold            weight          200
  extrabold       weight          205
  black           weight          210
  heavy           weight          210
  roman           slant           0
  italic          slant           100
  oblique         slant           110
  ultracondensed  width           50
  extracondensed  width           63
  condensed       width           75
  semicondensed   width           87
  normal          width           100
  semiexpanded    width           113
  expanded        width           125
  extraexpanded   width           150
  ultraexpanded   width           200
  proportional    spacing         0
  dual            spacing         90
  mono            spacing         100
  charcell        spacing         110
  unknown         rgba            0
  rgb             rgba            1
  bgr             rgba            2
  vrgb            rgba            3
  vbgr            rgba            4
  none            rgba            5
  lcdnone         lcdfilter       0
  lcddefault      lcdfilter       1
  lcdlight        lcdfilter       2
  lcdlegacy       lcdfilter       3
  hintnone        hintstyle       0
  hintslight      hintstyle       1
  hintmedium      hintstyle       2
  hintfull        hintstyle       3

<or>, <and>, <plus>, <minus>, <times>, <divide>

   These elements perform the specified operation on a list of
   expression elements. <or> and <and> are boolean, not bitwise.

<eq>, <not_eq>, <less>, <less_eq>, <more>, <more_eq>

   These elements compare two values, producing a boolean result.

<not>

   Inverts the boolean sense of its one expression element

<if>

   This element takes three expression elements; if the value of
   the first is true, it produces the value of the second,
   otherwise it produces the value of the third.

<alias>

   Alias elements provide a shorthand notation for the set of
   common match operations needed to substitute one font family
   for another. They contain a <family> element followed by
   optional <prefer>, <accept> and <default> elements. Fonts
   matching the <family> element are edited to prepend the list of
   <prefer>ed families before the matching <family>, append the
   <accept>able families after the matching <family> and append
   the <default> families to the end of the family list.

<family>

   Holds a single font family name

<prefer>, <accept>, <default>

   These hold a list of <family> elements to be used by the
   <alias> element.

EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION FILE

System configuration file

   This is an example of a system-wide configuration file
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- /etc/fonts/fonts.conf file to configure system font access -->
<fontconfig>
<!--
        Find fonts in these directories
-->
<dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</dir>

<!--
        Accept deprecated 'mono' alias, replacing it with 'monospace'
-->
<match target="pattern">
        <test qual="any" name="family"><string>mono</string></test>
        <edit name="family" mode="assign"><string>monospace</string></ed
it>
</match>

<!--
        Names not including any well known alias are given 'sans'
-->
<match target="pattern">
        <test qual="all" name="family" mode="not_eq">sans</test>
        <test qual="all" name="family" mode="not_eq">serif</test>
        <test qual="all" name="family" mode="not_eq">monospace</test>
        <edit name="family" mode="append_last"><string>sans</string></ed
it>
</match>

<!--
        Load per-user customization file, but don't complain
        if it doesn't exist
-->
<include ignore_missing="yes">~/.fonts.conf</include>

<!--
        Load local customization files, but don't complain
        if there aren't any
-->
<include ignore_missing="yes">conf.d</include>
<include ignore_missing="yes">local.conf</include>

<!--
        Alias well known font names to available TrueType fonts.
        These substitute TrueType faces for similar Type1
        faces to improve screen appearance.
-->
<alias>
        <family>Times</family>
        <prefer><family>Times New Roman</family></prefer>
        <default><family>serif</family></default>
</alias>
<alias>
        <family>Helvetica</family>
        <prefer><family>Arial</family></prefer>
        <default><family>sans</family></default>
</alias>
<alias>
        <family>Courier</family>
        <prefer><family>Courier New</family></prefer>
        <default><family>monospace</family></default>
</alias>

<!--
        Provide required aliases for standard names
        Do these after the users configuration file so that
        any aliases there are used preferentially
-->
<alias>
        <family>serif</family>
        <prefer><family>Times New Roman</family></prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
        <family>sans</family>
        <prefer><family>Arial</family></prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
        <family>monospace</family>
        <prefer><family>Andale Mono</family></prefer>
</alias>
</fontconfig>

User configuration file

   This is an example of a per-user configuration file that lives
   in ~/.fonts.conf
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- ~/.fonts.conf for per-user font configuration -->
<fontconfig>

<!--
        Private font directory
-->
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>

<!--
        use rgb sub-pixel ordering to improve glyph appearance on
        LCD screens.  Changes affecting rendering, but not matching
        should always use target="font".
-->
<match target="font">
        <edit name="rgba" mode="assign"><const>rgb</const></edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

Files

   fonts.conf contains configuration information for the
   fontconfig library consisting of directories to look at for
   font information as well as instructions on editing program
   specified font patterns before attempting to match the
   available fonts. It is in XML format.

   conf.d is the conventional name for a directory of additional
   configuration files managed by external applications or the
   local administrator. The filenames starting with decimal digits
   are sorted in lexicographic order and used as additional
   configuration files. All of these files are in XML format. The
   master fonts.conf file references this directory in an
   <include> directive.

   fonts.dtd is a DTD that describes the format of the
   configuration files.

   ~/.fonts.conf.d is the conventional name for a per-user
   directory of (typically auto-generated) configuration files,
   although the actual location is specified in the global
   fonts.conf file.

   ~/.fonts.conf is the conventional location for per-user font
   configuration, although the actual location is specified in the
   global fonts.conf file.

   ~/.fonts.cache-* is the conventional repository of font
   information that isn't found in the per-directory caches. This
   file is automatically maintained by fontconfig.

See Also

   fc-cat(1), fc-cache(1), fc-list(1), fc-match(1), fc-query(1)

Version

   Fontconfig version 2.9.0