libXfont provides the core of the legacy X11 font system, handling the
index files (fonts.dir, fonts.alias, fonts.scale), the various font file
formats, and rasterizing them. It is used by the X servers, the
X Font Server (xfs), and some font utilities (bdftopcf for instance),
but should not be used by normal X11 clients. X11 clients access fonts
via either the new API's in libXft, or the legacy API's in libX11.
libXfont supports a number of compression and font formats, and the
configure script takes various options to enable or disable them:
-- Compression types:
gzip - always enabled, no option to disable, requires libz
bzip2 - disabled by default, enable via --with-bzip2, requires libbz2
-- Font formats:
builtins - copies of the "fixed" & "cursor" fonts required by the
X protocol are built into the library so the X server always
has the fonts it requires to start up. Accessed via the
special 'built-ins' entry in the X server font path.
Enabled by default, disable via --disable-builtins.
freetype - handles scalable font formats including OpenType, FreeType,
and PostScript formats. Requires FreeType2 library.
Can also be used to handle bdf & bitmap pcf font formats.
Enabled by default, disable via --disable-freetype.
bdf bitmap fonts - text file format for distributing fonts, described
in http://www.x.org/docs/BDF/bdf.pdf specification. Normally
not used by the X server at runtime, as the fonts distributed
by X.Org in bdf format are compiled with bdftopcf when
installing/packaging them.
Enabled by default, disable via --disable-bdfformat.
pcf bitmap fonts - standard bitmap font format since X11R5 in 1991,
used for all bitmap fonts installed from X.Org packages.
Compiled format is architecture independent.
As noted above, usually produced by bdftopcf.
Enabled by default, disable via --disable-pcfformat.
snf bitmap fonts - standard bitmap font format prior to X11R5 in 1991,
remains only for backwards compatibility. Unlike pcf, snf files
are architecture specific, and contain less font information
than pcf files. snf fonts are deprecated and support for them
may be removed in future libXfont releases.
Disabled by default, enable via --disable-snfformat.
-- Font services:
xfs font servers - allows retreiving fonts as a client of an xfs server.
Enabled by default, disable via --disable-fc (font client).
If enabled, you can also use the standard libxtrans flags to
configure which transports can be used to connect to xfs:
--enable-unix-transport Enable UNIX domain socket transport
--enable-tcp-transport Enable TCP socket transport (IPv4)
--enable-ipv6 Enable IPv6 support for tcp-transport
--enable-local-transport Enable os-specific local transport
(Change --enable to --disable to force disabling support.)
The default setting is to enable all of the transports the
configure script can find OS support for.
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Please submit bugs & patches to the Xorg bugzilla:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=xorg
All questions regarding this software should be directed at the
Xorg mailing list:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg
The master development code repository can be found at:
git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/lib/libXfont
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libXfont
For more information on the git code manager, see:
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/GitPage
