MKFONTDIR(1)

💅 MKFONTDIR(1) — bestie edition 💅

Okay so this is mkfontdir(1) from the General Commands Manual, and we are about to make font-directory indexing make sense. Stay with me, bestie. 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

mkfontdir — create an index of X font files in a directory. Literally the little organizer that tells everyone where the fonts live. 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mkfontdir [-n] [-x suffix] [-r] [-p prefix] [-e encoding-directory-name]
...  [--] [directory-name ... ]

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

For every directory argument, mkfontdir reads all the font files in that directory and searches for properties named "FONT" — or, if that doesn’t work, it uses the name of the file with its suffix stripped off. 🕵️‍♀️ Those get converted to lower case and used as font names, and then — along with the name of the font file — they’re written out to the file fonts.dir in that directory. The X server and font server use fonts.dir to find font files. No cap.

Which kinds of font files mkfontdir reads depends on configuration parameters, but the usual lineup is PCF (suffix .pcf), SNF (suffix .snf), and BDF (suffix .bdf). If a font exists in multiple formats, mkfontdir chooses PCF first, then SNF, and finally BDF. Priority order, periodt. 👑

The first line of fonts.dir gives the number of fonts in the file. The remaining lines list the fonts themselves, one per line, in two fields: first is the name of the font file, followed by a space and the name of the font. 📝

🦋 SCALABLE FONTS 🦋

Scalable font files don’t usually include the X font name, so the file fonts.scale can be used to name the scalable fonts in the directory. The fonts listed in it are copied to fonts.dir by mkfontdir. fonts.scale has the same format as the fonts.dir file, and it can be created with the mkfontscale(1) program. ✨

🎀 FONT NAME ALIASES 🎀

The file fonts.alias, which can be put in any directory of the font-path, is used to map new names to existing fonts, and it should be edited by hand. 🖊️ The format is two white-space separated columns: the first contains aliases, and the second contains font-name patterns. Lines beginning with ! are comment lines and are ignored. 🙈

If neither the alias nor the value specifies the size fields of the font name, this is a scalable alias. A font name of any size that matches this alias will be mapped to the same size of the font that the alias resolves to. 🌀

When a font alias is used, the name it references is searched for in the normal manner, looking through each font directory in turn. That means aliases don’t need to mention fonts in the same directory as the alias file. iykyk. 🔍

To embed white space in either name, simply enclose it in double-quote marks; to embed double-quote marks (or any other character), precede them with back-slash:

"magic-alias with spaces"     "\"font name\" with quotes"
regular-alias            fixed

If the string FILE_NAMES_ALIASES stands alone on a line, each file-name in the directory (stripped of its suffix) will be used as an alias for that font. 🏷️

🌈 ENCODING FILES 🌈

The option -e can be used to specify a directory with encoding files. Every such directory is scanned for encoding files, and the list is then written to an encodings.dir file in every font directory. The encodings.dir file is used by the server to find encoding information. 🗂️

The encodings.dir file has the same format as fonts.dir. It maps encoding names (strings of the form CHARSET_REGISTRY-CHARSET_ENCODING ) to encoding file names.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

The following options are supported:

• -e — Specify a directory containing encoding files. The -e option may be specified multiple times, and all the specified directories will be read. The order of the entries is significant, because encodings found in earlier directories override those in later ones; encoding files in the same directory are discriminated by preferring compressed versions. 🗜️
• -n — do not scan for fonts, do not write font directory files. This option is useful when generating encoding directories only. 🚫🔤
• -p — Specify a prefix that is prepended to the encoding file path names when they are written to the encodings.dir file. The prefix is prepended as-is. If a / is required between the prefix and the path names, it must be supplied explicitly as part of the prefix. 🧷
• -r — Keep non-absolute encoding directories in their relative form when writing the encodings.dir file. The default is to convert relative encoding directories to absolute directories by prepending the current directory. The positioning of this option is significant, because this option only applies to subsequent -e options. 📍
• -x suffix — Ignore font files of type suffix. 🙅‍♀️
• -- — End options. 🛑

💾 FILES 💾

• fonts.dir — List of fonts in the directory and the files they are stored in. Created by mkfontdir. Read by the X server and font server each time the font path is set (see xset(1)). 💖
• fonts.scale — List of scalable fonts in the directory. Contents are copied to fonts.dir by mkfontdir. Can be created with mkfontscale(1). 🌸
• fonts.alias — List of font name aliases. Read by the X server and font server each time the font path is set (see xset(1)). 🎀
• encodings.dir — List of known encodings and the files they are stored in. Created by mkfontdir. Read by the X server and font server each time a font with an unknown charset is opened. 🗂️

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

Go read X(7), Xserver(1), mkfontscale(1), xfs(1), and xset(1). 💫

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💖 That’s the whole page, bestie! Footer tea: source/version is X Version 11, mkfontscale 1.2.4 — and there’s no date on this footer, so I’m not inventing one. Bye! 💖