Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!jim
From: jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: font names, xfd
Message-ID: <8811291459.AA13065@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 29 Nov 88 14:59:55 GMT
References: <1313@ora.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: X Consortium, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Lines: 43


> [questions on font *file* names]

You have it backwards.  The name of the file in which a font is stored is
unrelated to the name of the font (which is specified by the FONT property).
This allows everyone to use the new naming scheme (the long names are needed to
uniquely identify a font) without having to pervert their file system (before
people flame 14 character filename limits, think about spaces or slashes in
fontnames). 

To make using font names a little easier, and more portable between 
displays of different resolutions, the semantics of fontnames were extended
to allow wildcards in font names.  This allows you to specify only the
fields that are important to you.  For example, if you wanted to use a 12 point
"roman" Courier font for an xterm, you could use the either of the following
names:

	-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1
	*-courier-*-r-*-120-*

Note that you should match on the point size field which is measured in
tenths of a point (the 120 in this example) rather than the pixel field
(the 12).  This allows your defaults to work properly on tubes of different
resolution.  For example, to specify a 24 point, normal italic Charter, 

	*-charter-medium-i-*-240-*

will match either

	-bitstream-charter-medium-i-normal--25-240-75-75-p-136-iso8859-1
	-bitstream-charter-medium-i-normal--33-240-100-100-p-179-iso8859-1

depending on whether the 75dpi or 100dpi font directory comes first in your
font path.  This example also demonstrates why the pixel size should not be
when wildcarding.  On a 75dpi monitor, a 24 point font will be 25 pixels tall;
on a 100dpi monitor, it will be 33 pixels tall.

In summary, 

			font names  !=  file names


								Jim