QUESTION:
I know that scalable fonts are included in the AIX Windows 1.2.3 that
comes with the AIX 3.2.3 Selective Enhancement Upgrade but I don't know
how to initiate use of this feature. Can you tell me more about it and
direct me to documentation?
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A: Although InfoExplorer has information on scalable fonts, the bulk
of the following information comes from the book "X Window System
Administrator's Guide: Volume 8" (L. Mui & E. Pearce, 1992,
ISBN 0-937175-83-8), Chapter 5 "Font Management". I would highly
recommend this book.
The first step in initiating scalable fonts is to set up a font
server to enable users to access the fonts. There is an excellent
example of how to set up a font server on this system. Please
search on AIX windows font server.
Once the font server is going, the different fonts can be accessed
from the command line. A font name and its components are of the
form:
-b&h-lucida-medium-r-normal-sans-18-180-75-75-p-106-iso8859-1
aaa bbbbbb cccccc d eeeeee ffff gg hhh ii jj k lll mmmmmmmmm
where the components are as follows:
a Foundry - This is a registered name for the font "foundry"
(usually a company name) that supplied the font to the X
Consortium ("Adobe", "Bitstream", etc.).
b Family - The "family" or typographic style of the font
("Courier", "Lucida", etc.).
c Weight - The typographic weight or "blackness" of the font
("medium", "bold", etc.).
d Slant - The "posture" of the typeface ("Roman" is upright,
"Italic" is slanted, etc.).
e Set Width - The horizontal width of the font ("Normal",
"Narrow", etc.).
f Additional Style - An additional style that expresses
information not present in the other fields ("sans", or
not specified).
g Pixel Size - A height measurement in pixels at a certain
point size and resolution.
h Point Size - The size of the font in typographic "points"
(1/72 of an inch).
i Horizontal Resolution - The horizontal resolution in dots
per inch (dpi) from when the font was originally designed.
j Vertical Resolution - The vertical resolution in dots per
inch (dpi) from when the font was originally designed.
k Spacing - The description of how the width affects placement
of adjacent characters. A proportional ("p") font's
characters vary in width, so some characters may appear
closer to each other. This is usually desirable for hardcopy,
such as a book. A "CharCell" ("c") font treats each character
as a little box of the same dimensions as all the other
characters. These are better suited for "terminal" displays,
such as in an xterm window, which would look terrible if the
characters were of varying size.
l Average Width - The average width of the font in tenths of a
pixel.
m Character Set and Encoding - The encoding standard to which the
font conforms (ISO is the International Standards Organization)
and the particular character set.
The fields that are usually the most important to the X administrator
are size and resolution (for controlling the size of the font on the
screen) and spacing (for use with terminal emulators).
Fonts are specified to a client either as a resource or with the
"-fn" option. For example, a user can put the following line in
a resource file:
xterm*font: -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso8859-1
or invoke aixterm with the following command line:
aixterm -fn -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso8859-1
The default resources for most clients are specified in their
application defaults file.
For MIT servers prior to R5, a separate font was required for each
size of the font. For example, to display the font
-b&h-lucida-bold-i-normal-sans at the point sizes of 11, 14, 17,
20, and 34, you needed a font for each:
-b&h-lucida-bold-i-normal-sans-11-80-100-100-p-69-iso8859-1
-b&h-lucida-bold-i-normal-sans-14-100-100-100-p-90-iso8859-1
-b&h-lucida-bold-i-normal-sans-17-120-100-100-p-108-iso8859-1
-b&h-lucida-bold-i-normal-sans-20-140-100-100-p-127-iso8859-1
-b&h-lucida-bold-i-normal-sans-34-240-100-100-p-215-iso8859-1
This is simply because the fonts are bitmaps and are stored as such.
In R5, outline or "scalable" fonts are also available. These are
stored as a description of the outline of the font and can be
scaled by the server to any point size... The Speedo fonts listed
in the "/usr/lpp/X11/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/fonts.dir" file are of
the outline type. Outline fonts can be recognized by 0 values
for the size fields in the font name:
-bitstream-charter-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
-bitstream-charter-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
-bitstream-charter-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
-bitstream-charter-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
When the font is requested, the size fields are filled in with the
desired value:
command:
xlsfonts -fn 'bitstream-charter-bold-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-*'
output:
-bitstream-charter-bold-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-75-iso8859-1
Some advantages to outline fonts are:
o They need only one font file per font, vastly simplifying
administration and conserving disk space.
o They are more flexible, as it may be impossible to predict all
sizes that might be requested by users or required by different
displays.
Some advantages to bitmap fonts are:
o They usually look better than scaled fonts, as they are tuned
for each size.
o They may be faster to request, as there is no scaling overhead
before the font can be used.
I hope that this is enough to get you started. Other topics in
this chapter that may be of interest to you include:
+ "xlsfonts" command to see which fonts an X server knows about
+ "xfd" command to display all characters of a particular font
+ "xfontsel" command to browse through all available fonts and
see each one in turn
+ Aliasing of fonts
+ An AIXWindows example
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This item was created from library item Q621204 CBTLR
Additional search words:
AIX AIXWINDOWS ALTERNATE CBTLR ECTIVE ENHANCEMENTS ENVIRONMENT FONTS
INDEX IX MAR93 OZNEW RISC RISCSYSTEM RISCXWIN SCALABLE SEL SELECTIVE
SOFTWARE WINDOWS 1.2.3 3.2.3
WWQA: ITEM: RTA000029567 ITEM: RTA000029567
Dated: 11/1996 Category: RISCXWIN
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