MKFONTSCALE(1)

🎀 mkfontscale(1) 🎀

okay so bestie, welcome to the mkfontscale(1) page from the General Commands Manual — it's giving "font indexer main character energy" and honestly I'm obsessed. slay, let's get into the font tea. 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

mkfontscale — create an index of scalable font files for X

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mkfontscale [ -b ] [ -s ] [ -o filename ] [ -x suffix ] [ -a encoding ]
... [ -f fuzz ] [ -l ] [ -e directory ] [ -p prefix ] [ -r prefix ] [ -n
prefix ] [ -u | -U ] [ -v ] [ -- ] [ directory ] ...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

For each directory argument, mkfontscale reads all of the scalable font files in the directory. For every font file found, an X11 font name (XLFD) is generated, and is written together with the file name to a file fonts.scale in the directory. like, it's building the roster, bestie 📝

The resulting fonts.scale file should be checked and possibly manually edited before being used as input for the mkfontdir(1) program. pls look it over first — the manual says "checked and possibly manually edited," so don't just blindly ship it 💅

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -b — read bitmap fonts. By default, bitmap fonts are ignored. 💀
• -s — ignore scalable fonts. By default, scalable fonts are read. If -b is set, this flag has the side effect of enabling the reading of fonts.scale files. sneaky little side effect, iykyk.
• -o filename — send program output to filename; default is fonts.scale if bitmap fonts are not being read, and fonts.dir if they are. If filename is relative, it is created in the directory being processed. If it is the special value -, output is written to standard output. stdout girlies rise 🫶
• -x suffix — exclude all files with the specified suffix. bye bye, not in this font directory 💅
• -a encoding — add encoding to the list of encodings searched for. adding to the search party 🎀
• -f fuzz — set the fraction of characters that may be missing in large encodings to fuzz percent. Defaults to 2%. fuzz is such a cute name for a threshold 🌸
• -l — Write fonts.dir files suitable for implementations that cannot re-encode legacy fonts (BDF and PCF). By default, it is assumed that the implementation can re-encode Unicode-encoded legacy fonts. legacy font re-encoding tea 🍓
• -e directory — specifies a directory with encoding files. Every such directory is scanned for encoding files, the list of which is then written to an encodings.dir file in every font directory. encoding files getting their own directory era ✨
• -p prefix — Specifies a prefix that is prepended to the encoding file path names when they are written to the encodings.dir file. The prefix is prepended literally: if a / is required between the prefix and the path names, it must be supplied explicitly as part of the prefix. literally literally — no auto-slash, bestie 😭
• -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, as this option only applies to subsequent -e options. order matters, bestie 👑
• -n — do not scan for fonts, do not write font directory files. This option is useful when generating encoding directories only. encoding directories only? say less 🦋
• -u, -U — disable (-u) or enable (-U) indexing of ISO 10646:1 font encodings (default: enabled). ISO 10646:1 said bestie rights 💜
• -v, --version — print program version and exit. short and iconic 🎀
• --help — print program usage and exit. help is there 🫶
• -- — end of options. that's a wrap on flags 💅

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• X(7)
• Xserver(1)
• mkfontdir(1)
• xfs(1)
• xset(1)

⭐ NOTES ⭐

The format of the fonts.scale, fonts.dir and encodings.dir files is documented in the mkfontdir(1) manual page. go read that one too, bestie 📚

⚠️ okay so this is important: Mkfontscale will overwrite any fonts.scale file even if it has been hand-edited. not me forgetting my hand edits 💀

mkfontscale -b -s -l is equivalent to mkfontdir. periodt ✨

👑 AUTHOR 👑

The version of mkfontscale included in this X.Org Foundation release was originally written by Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@freedesktop.org> for the XFree86 project. The functionality of this program was inspired by the ttmkfdir utility by Joerg Pommnitz. icons only, fr fr 🌈

okay bye bestie 💖 this page is from X Version 11 and covers mkfontscale 1.2.4; the footer date isn't printed here, so I'm not making one up 🎀✨