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<article id="index">
  <title>GNOME Font Selector Manual</title>

  <artheader> 
    <copyright> 
      <year> 2000</year>
      <holder>Alexander Kirillov</holder>
    </copyright>
    <legalnotice id="legalnotice">
   <para>
        Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
        document under the terms of the <ulink type="help"
        url="gnome-help:fdl"><citetitle>GNU Free Documentation
        License</citetitle></ulink>, Version 1.1 or any later version
        published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant
        Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. You
        may obtain a copy of the <citetitle>GNU Free Documentation
        License</citetitle> from the Free Software Foundation by
        visiting <ulink type="http" url="http://www.fsf.org">their Web
        site</ulink> or by writing to: Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
        59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
   </para>
   <para>
    Many of the names used by companies to distinguish their products and
    services are claimed as trademarks. Where those names appear in any
    GNOME documentation, and those trademarks are made aware to the members
    of the GNOME Documentation Project, the names have been printed in caps
    or initial caps.
   </para>

    </legalnotice>
  </artheader>
    <sect1 id="intro">
      <title> Introduction</title>
      <para>
	<application>GNOME Font selector</application> is a simple
	utility for choosing a screen (i.e. X Window System) font.
        It is included in <application>gnome-utils</application>
	package, which is a part of GNOME environment. This manual
	describes version &version; of <application>GNOME Font
	selector</application>.
    </para>
    <para>
      <application>GNOME Font selector</application> 
	is usually launched when you are changing an application's
	font in a <interface>Settings</interface> or
	<interface>Preferences</interface> dialog. It can also be
	launched from the main menu by selecting <guimenuitem>Font
	Selector</guimenuitem> item in the
	<guimenu>Utilities</guimenu> submenu of the <guimenu>Main
	Menu</guimenu>, or from the command line by running command
	<command>gfontsel</command>. 
      </para>
      <para> It is important to know that in X Window System, each
	font has a number of attributes, such as family (Helvetica,
	Times, Courier&hellip;), size, weight, slant, etc., and two
	fonts are considered different even if they only differ in one
	of the properties, such as size or weight: <guilabel>Helvetica
	10 point</guilabel>, <guilabel>Helvetica 12 point</guilabel>,
	and <guilabel>Helvetica 10 point bold</guilabel> are
	considered as  different fonts.  Each font has a unique name
	(officially known as <emphasis>X Logical Font
	Description</emphasis>, or XLFD), which includes the values of
	all font's attributes, and by necessity is very long. Detailed
	description of X Window System fonts, their attributes and names can
	be found in <xref linkend="xlfd">.
      </para>
    </sect1>
    <sect1 id="mainwin">
      <title>Main window</title>
      <para>  
	This window (labelled <guilabel>Font</guilabel>) is the main window
	used for choosing the font. It is shown in <xref linkend="mainshot">. 
	</para>
	<figure id="mainshot">
	  <title>GNOME Font Selector</title>
	  <screenshot>
	    <screeninfo> GNOME Font Selector - Main Window</screeninfo>
	    <graphic fileref="figures/mainshot" format="png"
	    srccredit="sasha">
	    </graphic>
	  </screenshot>
	</figure>

      <sect2 id="mainwin-basic">
	<title>Basic usage</title>
       <para>
	To choose a font, select the font family
	(for example, <guilabel>courier</guilabel>) in the left
	column, then select font style&mdash;that is, weight and slant (for
	example, <guilabel>bold italic</guilabel>), and finally, font size. 
      </para>
      <para> The <guilabel>Preview</guilabel> window will show you what
	the selected font looks like. By default, it shows the Latin
	alphabet; you can also type any text you like in this window,
	and it will be shown using the selected font.
      </para>
      <para>
	To find more information about the selected font, you can switch to
	the <link linkend="fontinfo"><guilabel>Font
	information</guilabel> window</link>. 
      </para> 
      <para>
	If the font selector utility was launched by some application,
	such as one of the preferences dialogs, you will have buttons
	<guibutton>OK</guibutton> and <guibutton>Cancel</guibutton> at
	the bottom of the window. After you are satisfied with the
	chosen font, you can press <guibutton>OK</guibutton> and the
	name of the selected font will be returned to the launching
	application.
      </para>
      <para>
	If the font selector utility was started from the menu or from
	the command line, it will have buttons
	<guibutton>Apply</guibutton> and <guibutton>Close</guibutton>.
	Pressing <guibutton>Apply</guibutton> button will copy the
	full name (XLFD) of the selected font to the clipboard, so
	that it can be pasted into any other area of the screen by
	pressing the middle mouse button. Pressing
	<guibutton>Apply</guibutton> button also shows the name of the
	selected font in the <guilabel>Selection</guilabel> field at
	the top of the screen.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2 id="mainwin-fine">
      <title> Finer points</title>
      <para> If there are several fonts with the same family name, the
	font foundry (usually the vendor name) will also be shown in
	the left field, for example: <guilabel>courier(adobe)</guilabel>,
	<guilabel>courier(bitstream)</guilabel>.
      </para>
      <para>
	<guilabel>Font Style</guilabel> field shows more than just
	font weight and slant. Namely, it also shows font's spacing,
	which can be monospaced (<guilabel>[M]</guilabel>),
	character-cell (<guilabel>[C]</guilabel>), or proportional (no
	label). In monospaced and character-cell fonts, each character
	has the same width; in proportional fonts, the character width
	varies, which usually looks better.  

	<warning>
	<title>Warning</title> 

	  <para> Unfortunately, terminal emulation programs (including
	  <application>xterm</application> and
	  <application>gnome-terminal</application>) and many programs
	  initially designed to work in a terminal (such as
	  <application> emacs</application> editor) can only properly
	  display monospaced and character cell fonts.
       </para>
       </warning> 
      </para>
      <para>
	Finally, <guilabel>Font Style</guilabel> field also shows all
	possible character sets available for given font (if there is
	more than one). Roughly speaking, character set describes
	symbols of what alphabet are shown in this font. The most
	common charset is <literal>iso8859-1</literal>, which includes
	all Latin letters, punctuation marks, numbers and enough
	accented letters to cover majority of Western European
	languages. More information is given in <xref linkend="xlfd">.
      </para>

      <para> You will also notice that in the
        <guilabel>Size</guilabel> field, some font sizes are marked
        with stars. These are the sizes of unscaled bitmap fonts; they
        usually look better than other type (scalable and scaled
        bitmap) fonts &mdash; see <xref linkend="filter">.  
     </para>
      
      <para> You can configure the font selector dialog to show only
        those fonts which meet certain criteria. This is done in the
        <link linkend="filter"><guilabel>Filter</guilabel>
        window</link>. If you later decide that you again want to see
        all the fonts, just press the button <guibutton>Reset
        Filter</guibutton> either in the main window or in the filter
        window.
      </para>


      </sect2>	
    </sect1>
    <sect1 id="fontinfo">
      <title>Font Information window</title>
      <para>
	This window shows the information about selected font, both
	the values you requested and actual values. This is useful if
	you want to check the values of some of the font's parameters
	which you can not specify in the main window, such as screen
	resolution. This window also shows the full font name (<link
	linkend="xlfd">XLFD</link>), which contains the same
	information.
      </para>
    </sect1>


    <sect1 id="filter">
      <title>Filter window</title>
      <para>
	In this window, you can set the font selector to show only the
	fonts which satisfy some criteria.  You can specify values for
	font foundry (vendor), weight, character set, slant, set
	width, and spacing (see <xref linkend="xlfd"> for description
	of these and other font parameters). You can choose
	<keysym>*</keysym>, which means <quote>any value</quote>; you
	can also specify several values for the same field: just click
	on several of the them with the left mouse button (you do not
	need to hold <keycap>SHIFT</keycap> or <keycap>CTRL</keycap>).
      </para>

	<figure id="filtershot">
	  <title>Filter window</title>
	  <screenshot>
	    <screeninfo> GNOME Font Selector - Filter Window</screeninfo>
	    <graphic fileref="figures/filterwin" format="png"
	    srccredit="sasha">
	    </graphic>
	  </screenshot>
	</figure>



      <para> You can also specify allowed font types, using
	checkbuttons at the top of this window. Possible types are
	bitmap fonts, scalable fonts, and scaled bitmaps. The most
	common fonts are bitmap fonts; scalable fonts (TrueType and
	Type 1 PostScript) usually produce equally good quality, but
	not all implementations of X Window System are able to use
	them. 
      </para>
      <para> 
	As the name shows, scalable fonts can be scaled to any size without
	loss of quality. While it is possible to scale bitmap fonts as well,
	the quality of scaled bitmap fonts is disastrous. For this reason, by
	default font selector does not show scaled bitmap fonts. 
      </para>
      <para>
	After you have set your filter, you can return to the <link
	linkend="mainwin"><interface>main window</interface></link>
	(do not press <guibutton>OK</guibutton> or
	<guibutton>Apply</guibutton> &mdash; just choose the tab
	<guilabel>Font</guilabel>), which will now only show the fonts
	satisfying your criteria. To remind you about this, the main
	window will now show words <guilabel>Filter
	applied</guilabel>.
      </para>
      <para>
	To return to the default filter (i.e., show all possible fonts
	except for scaled bitmaps), press <guibutton>Reset
	Filter</guibutton> either in the <interface>Filter
	window</interface> or in the <interface>main
	window</interface>.
      </para>
    </sect1>
    <sect1 id="xlfd">
      <title> Font attributes in X Window System and XLFD</title>
      <para>
	As was said earlier, each font in X Window system has a number
	of attributes and a full name, also known as X Logical Font
	Description (XLFD), which lists all of these attributes and therefore
	is quite long.  Typical font name looks like this
	<programlisting>
	  -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1
	</programlisting>
      </para>
      <para>
	This name consists of 14 fields, showing the values of 14 parameters
	of the font, separated by dashes. 
      </para>
      <para>
	While such a name gives a complete information about the font,
	it is somewhat overwhelming, especially since not all of this
	parameters are actually useful. To make life a little bit
	easier, you can use wildcard <keysym>*</keysym> in the font
	name; for example, the previous font can also be referred to
	as
	<programlisting>
	  -adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
	</programlisting>
	As usual, <keysym>*</keysym> matches any value; if there are
	several fonts matching the given name, the system will pick
	the first matching one. In this particular example, most
	probably there is only one font matching this name, so this
	name is unambiguous.
      </para>
      <para> 
	Below we list those of the  font's 14 attributes which are actually
	useful:
	<itemizedlist mark="bull">
	  <listitem><para> 
              <guilabel>foundry</guilabel> &mdash; font
	      foundry, the company or individual which made the font
	      (in our example, <literal>adobe</literal>) 
          </para></listitem>

	  <listitem><para> <guilabel>family</guilabel> &mdash; font
	      family, the popular nickname of the font (in our
	      example, <literal>courier</literal>) 
          </para></listitem>

	  <listitem><para> 
              <guilabel>weight</guilabel> &mdash; font weight (in our
	      example, <literal>medium</literal>). Admissible values:
              bold, medium, etc. 
	  </para></listitem>

	  <listitem><para> <guilabel>slant</guilabel> &mdash; font
              slant (in our example, <literal>(r)oman</literal>,
              i.e. unslanted). Admissible values: (i)talics,
              (o)blique, (r)roman, etc.  
          </para></listitem>

	  <listitem><para> <guilabel>pixelsize</guilabel> &mdash; the
              number of pixels vertically in a character (in our
              example, 12) </para></listitem>

	  <listitem><para> <guilabel>pointsize</guilabel> &mdash;
              approximate point size of the font, measured in tenths
              of a point. In the example above, point size is 120,
              that is, 12 points. One point is equal to 1/72 of an
              inch, which is the common convention in English and
              American typesetting.  </para></listitem>

	  <listitem><para> horizontal and vertical
               <guilabel>resolutions</guilabel> in dots per inch
               &mdash; in the example above, both are 75 dpi.
	    </para>
	    <para>
	      Note that point size, pixel size, and vertical resolution are
	      related: for fonts with resolution 75dpi, point size is
	      approximately equal to (pixel size)*10; for fonts with resolution
	      100dpi, point size is approximately equal to (pixel size)*7.
	    </para></listitem>

	  <listitem><para> <guilabel>spacing</guilabel> &mdash;
              describes variance of character sizes in the
              font. Allowed values are (m)onospaced, (c)haracter cell
              (in both of these spacings, all characters have the same
              width) and proportional (characters have varying
              sizes). Proportional fonts usually look nicer. 
              </para></listitem>

	  <listitem><para> character set <guilabel>registry</guilabel>
              and <guilabel>encoding</guilabel> &mdash; these two
              parameters, commonly referred to as <guilabel>character
              set</guilabel>, or <guilabel>charset</guilabel> for
              short, describe what set of symbols (or what alphabet)
              this font represents. There is a number of possible
              charsets. Some of the most popular ones include:
	      <itemizedlist>
		<listitem>
		  <para>
		    <emphasis>iso8859-1</emphasis>, also known as
		    Latin 1 &mdash; this character set includes all
		    the symbols found on the keyboard, i.e. Latin
		    letters, punctuation marks, numbers, symbols such
		    as @ or $. It also includes some special symbols,
		    such as the copyright sign, and a number of
		    accented letters, thus covering the needs of most
		    Western European languages (to be precise,
		    Afrikaans, Basque, Catalan, Danish, Dutch,
		    English, Faeroese, Finnish, French, Galician,
		    German, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian,
		    Portuguese, Scottish, Spanish, and Swedish).
		  </para>
		</listitem>
		<listitem><para>
		    <emphasis>iso8859-7</emphasis> &mdash; includes Latin and
		    Greek alphabets 
		  </para></listitem> 
		<listitem><para>
		    <emphasis>iso8859-8</emphasis> &mdash; includes Latin and
		    Hebrew alphabets 
		  </para></listitem>
		<listitem><para>
		    <emphasis>koi8-r</emphasis> &mdash; includes Latin and
		    Cyrillic alphabets 
		  </para></listitem>
		<listitem><para>
		    <emphasis>big5.eten.3.10-1</emphasis> &mdash; Chinese
		    (Big5 encoding) 
		  </para></listitem>

		<listitem><para> <emphasis>gb2312.1980-0</emphasis>
		    &mdash; Chinese (GB encoding) 
		</para></listitem>

	      <listitem><para> 
                    <emphasis>jisx0208.1983-0</emphasis> &mdash; Japanese
		</para></listitem>
	      </itemizedlist>


	    </para></listitem>
	</itemizedlist>
      </para>
      <para>
	The remaining font attributes (<guilabel>Set Width</guilabel>,
	<guilabel>Additional Style</guilabel>, and <guilabel>Average
	Width</guilabel>) are rarely used and therefore we skip their
	description.
      </para>
      <para>
	Full XLFD specifications are included in technical documentation for
	the X Window system and can be found online at <ulink
	url="ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.4/xc/doc/hardcopy/XLFD" type="ftp">    
	  ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.4/xc/doc/hardcopy/XLFD</ulink>; most probably,
	you will never need it.
    </para>

  </sect1>
  
  <sect1 id="authors">
    <title>Authors</title>
     <para>
      <application>GNOME Font Selector</application> was written by
      Andrew Veliath (<email>andrewtv@usa.net</email>) with the help
      of many other GNOME developers.  Please send all comments,
      suggestions, and bug reports to the <ulink
      url="http://bugs.gnome.org" type="http">GNOME bug tracking
      database</ulink>. (Instructions for submitting bug reports can
      be found <ulink url="http://bugs.gnome.org/Reporting.html"
      type="http"> on-line</ulink>.) You can also use <application>Bug
      Report Tool</application> (<command>bug-buddy</command>),
      available in the <guisubmenu>Utilities</guisubmenu> submenu of
      <guimenu>Main Menu</guimenu>, for submitting bug reports.
      </para>
    <para>
      This manual was written by Alexander Kirillov
      (<email>kirillov@math.sunysb.edu</email>). Please send all
      comments and suggestions regarding this manual to the <ulink
      type="http" url="http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp">GNOME
      Documentation Project</ulink> by sending an email to
      <email>docs@gnome.org</email>. You can also add your comments
      online by using the <ulink type="http"
      url="http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp/doctable/">GNOME
      Documentation Status Table</ulink>.
      </para>
    </sect1>

 <!-- ============= Application License ============================= -->

 <sect1 id="license">
  <title>License</title>
  <para>
   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
   modify it under the terms of the  <ulink type="help" url="gnome-help:gpl">
    <citetitle>GNU General Public License</citetitle></ulink> as
   published by the Free Software Foundation; 
   either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
   version.
  </para>
  <para>
   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
   WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
   <citetitle>GNU General Public License</citetitle> for more details.
  </para>
  <para>
   A copy of the <citetitle>GNU General Public License</citetitle> is
   included as an appendix to the <citetitle>GNOME Users
   Guide</citetitle>.  You may also obtain a copy of the
   <citetitle>GNU General Public License</citetitle> from the Free
   Software Foundation by visiting <ulink type="http"
   url="http://www.fsf.org">their Web site</ulink> or by writing to
   <address>
    Free Software Foundation, Inc.
    <street>59 Temple Place</street> - Suite 330
    <city>Boston</city>, <state>MA</state> <postcode>02111-1307</postcode>
    <country>USA</country>
   </address>
  </para>
 </sect1>

  
</article>


