xenocara/lib/libXfont2

libXfont - X font handling library for server & utilities

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, and will eventually be used by the X Font Server (xfs), but should not be used by normal X11 clients. X11 clients access fonts via either the new APIs in libXft, or the legacy APIs in libX11.

This version of libXfont is not compatible with xfs, or with the legacy bdftopcf utility; these packages require libXfont 1.5, not libXfont 2.0 or later. The two versions can be installed in parallel, and eventually the need for 1.5 will go away. We apologize for the inconvenience.

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 https://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.

---

All questions regarding this software should be directed at the Xorg mailing list:

https://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg

The master development code repository can be found at:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libXfont

Please submit bug reports and requests to merge patches there.

For patch submission instructions, see:

https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/SubmittingPatches