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FONTS-CONF(5) FONTS-CONF(5)
NAME
fonts.conf - Font configuration files
SYNOPSIS
/etc/fonts/fonts.conf
/etc/fonts/fonts.dtd
/etc/fonts/conf.d
~/.fonts.conf.d
~/.fonts.conf
DESCRIPTION
Fontconfig is a library designed to provide system-wide font configuration, customization and application access.
FUNCTIONAL OVERVIEW
Fontconfig contains two essential modules, the configuration module which builds an internal configuration from XML files
and the matching module which accepts font patterns and returns the nearest matching font.
FONT CONFIGURATION
The configuration module consists of the FcConfig datatype, libexpat and FcConfigParse which walks over an XML tree and
amends a configuration with data found within. From an external perspective, configuration of the library consists of
generating a valid XML tree and feeding that to FcConfigParse. The only other mechanism provided to applications for
changing the running configuration is to add fonts and directories to the list of application-provided font files.
The intent is to make font configurations relatively static, and shared by as many applications as possible. It is hoped
that this will lead to more stable font selection when passing names from one application to another. XML was chosen as
a configuration file format because it provides a format which is easy for external agents to edit while retaining the
correct structure and syntax.
Font configuration is separate from font matching; applications needing to do their own matching can access the available
fonts from the library and perform private matching. The intent is to permit applications to pick and choose appropriate
functionality from the library instead of forcing them to choose between this library and a private configuration mecha-
nism. The hope is that this will ensure that configuration of fonts for all applications can be centralized in one place.
Centralizing font configuration will simplify and regularize font installation and customization.
FONT PROPERTIES
While font patterns may contain essentially any properties, there are some well known properties with associated types.
Fontconfig uses some of these properties for font matching and font completion. Others are provided as a convenience for
the applications' rendering mechanism.
Property Type Description
--------------------------------------------------------------
family String Font family names
familylang String Languages corresponding to each family
style String Font style. Overrides weight and slant
stylelang String Languages corresponding to each style
fullname String Font full names (often includes style)
fullnamelang String Languages corresponding to each fullname
slant Int Italic, oblique or roman
weight Int Light, medium, demibold, bold or black
size Double Point size
width Int Condensed, normal or expanded
aspect Double Stretches glyphs horizontally before hinting
pixelsize Double Pixel size
spacing Int Proportional, dual-width, monospace or charcell
foundry String Font foundry name
antialias Bool Whether glyphs can be antialiased
hinting Bool Whether the rasterizer should use hinting
hintstyle Int Automatic hinting style
verticallayout Bool Use vertical layout
autohint Bool Use autohinter instead of normal hinter
globaladvance Bool Use font global advance data
file String The filename holding the font
index Int The index of the font within the file
ftface FT_Face Use the specified FreeType face object
rasterizer String Which rasterizer is in use
outline Bool Whether the glyphs are outlines
scalable Bool Whether glyphs can be scaled
scale Double Scale factor for point->pixel conversions
dpi Double Target dots per inch
rgba Int unknown, rgb, bgr, vrgb, vbgr,
none - subpixel geometry
lcdfilter Int Type of LCD filter
minspace Bool Eliminate leading from line spacing
charset CharSet Unicode chars encoded by the font
lang String List of RFC-3066-style languages this
font supports
fontversion Int Version number of the font
capability String List of layout capabilities in the font
embolden Bool Rasterizer should synthetically embolden the font
FONT MATCHING
Fontconfig performs matching by measuring the distance from a provided pattern to all of the available fonts in the sys-
tem. The closest matching font is selected. This ensures that a font will always be returned, but doesn't ensure that it
is anything like the requested pattern.
Font matching starts with an application constructed pattern. The desired attributes of the resulting font are collected
together in a pattern. Each property of the pattern can contain one or more values; these are listed in priority order;
matches earlier in the list are considered "closer" than matches later in the list.
The initial pattern is modified by applying the list of editing instructions specific to patterns found in the configura-
tion; each consists of a match predicate and a set of editing operations. They are executed in the order they appeared in
the configuration. Each match causes the associated sequence of editing operations to be applied.
After the pattern has been edited, a sequence of default substitutions are performed to canonicalize the set of available
properties; this avoids the need for the lower layers to constantly provide default values for various font properties
during rendering.
The canonical font pattern is finally matched against all available fonts. The distance from the pattern to the font is
measured for each of several properties: foundry, charset, family, lang, spacing, pixelsize, style, slant, weight,
antialias, rasterizer and outline. This list is in priority order -- results of comparing earlier elements of this list
weigh more heavily than later elements.
There is one special case to this rule; family names are split into two bindings; strong and weak. Strong family names
are given greater precedence in the match than lang elements while weak family names are given lower precedence than lang
elements. This permits the document language to drive font selection when any document specified font is unavailable.
The pattern representing that font is augmented to include any properties found in the pattern but not found in the font
itself; this permits the application to pass rendering instructions or any other data through the matching system.
Finally, the list of editing instructions specific to fonts found in the configuration are applied to the pattern. This
modified pattern is returned to the application.
The return value contains sufficient information to locate and rasterize the font, including the file name, pixel size
and other rendering data. As none of the information involved pertains to the FreeType library, applications are free to
use any rasterization engine or even to take the identified font file and access it directly.
The match/edit sequences in the configuration are performed in two passes because there are essentially two different
operations necessary -- the first is to modify how fonts are selected; aliasing families and adding suitable defaults.
The second is to modify how the selected fonts are rasterized. Those must apply to the selected font, not the original
pattern as false matches will often occur.
FONT NAMES
Fontconfig provides a textual representation for patterns that the library can both accept and generate. The representa-
tion is in three parts, first a list of family names, second a list of point sizes and finally a list of additional prop-
erties:
<families>-<point sizes>:<name1>=<values1>:<name2>=<values2>...
Values in a list are separated with commas. The name needn't include either families or point sizes; they can be elided.
In addition, there are symbolic constants that simultaneously indicate both a name and a value. Here are some examples:
Name Meaning
----------------------------------------------------------
Times-12 12 point Times Roman
Times-12:bold 12 point Times Bold
Courier:italic Courier Italic in the default size
Monospace:matrix=1 .1 0 1 The users preferred monospace font
with artificial obliquing
The '\', '-', ':' and ',' characters in family names must be preceeded by a '\' character to avoid having them misinter-
preted. Similarly, values containing '\', '=', '_', ':' and ',' must also have them preceeded by a '\' character. The '\'
characters are stripped out of the family name and values as the font name is read.
DEBUGGING APPLICATIONS
To help diagnose font and applications problems, fontconfig is built with a large amount of internal debugging left
enabled. It is controlled by means of the FC_DEBUG environment variable. The value of this variable is interpreted as a
number, and each bit within that value controls different debugging messages.
Name Value Meaning
---------------------------------------------------------
MATCH 1 Brief information about font matching
MATCHV 2 Extensive font matching information
EDIT 4 Monitor match/test/edit execution
FONTSET 8 Track loading of font information at startup
CACHE 16 Watch cache files being written
CACHEV 32 Extensive cache file writing information
PARSE 64 (no longer in use)
SCAN 128 Watch font files being scanned to build caches
SCANV 256 Verbose font file scanning information
MEMORY 512 Monitor fontconfig memory usage
CONFIG 1024 Monitor which config files are loaded
LANGSET 2048 Dump char sets used to construct lang values
OBJTYPES 4096 Display message when value typechecks fail
Add the value of the desired debug levels together and assign that (in base 10) to the FC_DEBUG environment variable
before running the application. Output from these statements is sent to stdout.
LANG TAGS
Each font in the database contains a list of languages it supports. This is computed by comparing the Unicode coverage of
the font with the orthography of each language. Languages are tagged using an RFC-3066 compatible naming and occur in two
parts -- the ISO 639 language tag followed a hyphen and then by the ISO 3166 country code. The hyphen and country code
may be elided.
Fontconfig has orthographies for several languages built into the library. No provision has been made for adding new
ones aside from rebuilding the library. It currently supports 122 of the 139 languages named in ISO 639-1, 141 of the
languages with two-letter codes from ISO 639-2 and another 30 languages with only three-letter codes. Languages with both
two and three letter codes are provided with only the two letter code.
For languages used in multiple territories with radically different character sets, fontconfig includes per-territory
orthographies. This includes Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Pashto, Tigrinya and Chinese.
CONFIGURATION FILE FORMAT
Configuration files for fontconfig are stored in XML format; this format makes external configuration tools easier to
write and ensures that they will generate syntactically correct configuration files. As XML files are plain text, they
can also be manipulated by the expert user using a text editor.
The fontconfig document type definition resides in the external entity "fonts.dtd"; this is normally stored in the
default font configuration directory (/etc/fonts). Each configuration file should contain the following structure:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
...
</fontconfig>
<FONTCONFIG>
This is the top level element for a font configuration and can contain <dir>, <cache>, <include>, <match> and <alias>
elements in any order.
<DIR>
This element contains a directory name which will be scanned for font files to include in the set of available fonts.
<CACHE>
This element contains a file name for the per-user cache of font information. If it starts with '~', it refers to a file
in the users home directory. This file is used to hold information about fonts that isn't present in the per-directory
cache files. It is automatically maintained by the fontconfig library. The default for this file is
``~/.fonts.cache-<version>'', where <version> is the font configuration file version number (currently 2).
<INCLUDE IGNORE_MISSING= NO">"
This element contains the name of an additional configuration file or directory. If a directory, every file within that
directory starting with an ASCII digit (U+0030 - U+0039) and ending with the string ``.conf'' will be processed in sorted
order. When the XML datatype is traversed by FcConfigParse, the contents of the file(s) will also be incorporated into
the configuration by passing the filename(s) to FcConfigLoadAndParse. If 'ignore_missing' is set to "yes" instead of the
default "no", a missing file or directory will elicit no warning message from the library.
<CONFIG>
This element provides a place to consolidate additional configuration information. <config> can contain <blank> and <res-
can> elements in any order.
<BLANK>
Fonts often include "broken" glyphs which appear in the encoding but are drawn as blanks on the screen. Within the
<blank> element, place each Unicode characters which is supposed to be blank in an <int> element. Characters outside of
this set which are drawn as blank will be elided from the set of characters supported by the font.
<RESCAN>
The <rescan> element holds an <int> element which indicates the default interval between automatic checks for font con-
figuration changes. Fontconfig will validate all of the configuration files and directories and automatically rebuild
the internal datastructures when this interval passes.
<SELECTFONT>
This element is used to black/white list fonts from being listed or matched against. It holds acceptfont and rejectfont
elements.
<ACCEPTFONT>
Fonts matched by an acceptfont element are "whitelisted"; such fonts are explicitly included in the set of fonts used to
resolve list and match requests; including them in this list protects them from being "blacklisted" by a rejectfont ele-
ment. Acceptfont elements include glob and pattern elements which are used to match fonts.
<REJECTFONT>
Fonts matched by an rejectfont element are "blacklisted"; such fonts are excluded from the set of fonts used to resolve
list and match requests as if they didn't exist in the system. Rejectfont elements include glob and pattern elements
which are used to match fonts.
<GLOB>
Glob elements hold shell-style filename matching patterns (including ? and *) which match fonts based on their complete
pathnames. This can be used to exclude a set of directories (/usr/share/fonts/uglyfont*), or particular font file types
(*.pcf.gz), but the latter mechanism relies rather heavily on filenaming conventions which can't be relied upon. Note
that globs only apply to directories, not to individual fonts.
<PATTERN>
Pattern elements perform list-style matching on incoming fonts; that is, they hold a list of elements and associated val-
ues. If all of those elements have a matching value, then the pattern matches the font. This can be used to select fonts
based on attributes of the font (scalable, bold, etc), which is a more reliable mechanism than using file extensions.
Pattern elements include patelt elements.
<PATELT NAME= PROPERTY">"
Patelt elements hold a single pattern element and list of values. They must have a 'name' attribute which indicates the
pattern element name. Patelt elements include int, double, string, matrix, bool, charset and const elements.
<MATCH TARGET= PATTERN">"
This element holds first a (possibly empty) list of <test> elements and then a (possibly empty) list of <edit> elements.
Patterns which match all of the tests are subjected to all the edits. If 'target' is set to "font" instead of the default
"pattern", then this element applies to the font name resulting from a match rather than a font pattern to be matched. If
'target' is set to "scan", then this element applies when the font is scanned to build the fontconfig database.
<TEST QUAL= ANY" NAME="PROPERTY" TARGET="DEFAULT" COMPARE="EQ">"
This element contains a single value which is compared with the target ('pattern', 'font', 'scan' or 'default') property
"property" (substitute any of the property names seen above). 'compare' can be one of "eq", "not_eq", "less", "less_eq",
"more", or "more_eq". 'qual' may either be the default, "any", in which case the match succeeds if any value associated
with the property matches the test value, or "all", in which case all of the values associated with the property must
match the test value. When used in a <match target="font"> element, the target= attribute in the <test> element selects
between matching the original pattern or the font. "default" selects whichever target the outer <match> element has
selected.
<EDIT NAME= PROPERTY" MODE="ASSIGN" BINDING="WEAK">"
This element contains a list of expression elements (any of the value or operator elements). The expression elements are
evaluated at run-time and modify the property "property". The modification depends on whether "property" was matched by
one of the associated <test> elements, if so, the modification may affect the first matched value. Any values inserted
into the property are given the indicated binding ("strong", "weak" or "same") with "same" binding using the value from
the matched pattern element. 'mode' is one of:
Mode With Match Without Match
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"assign" Replace matching value Replace all values
"assign_replace" Replace all values Replace all values
"prepend" Insert before matching Insert at head of list
"prepend_first" Insert at head of list Insert at head of list
"append" Append after matching Append at end of list
"append_last" Append at end of list Append at end of list
<INT>, <DOUBLE>, <STRING>, <BOOL>
These elements hold a single value of the indicated type. <bool> elements hold either true or false. An important limita-
tion exists in the parsing of floating point numbers -- fontconfig requires that the mantissa start with a digit, not a
decimal point, so insert a leading zero for purely fractional values (e.g. use 0.5 instead of .5 and -0.5 instead of
-.5).
<MATRIX>
This element holds the four <double> elements of an affine transformation.
<NAME>
Holds a property name. Evaluates to the first value from the property of the font, not the pattern.
<CONST>
Holds the name of a constant; these are always integers and serve as symbolic names for common font values:
Constant Property Value
-------------------------------------
thin weight 0
extralight weight 40
ultralight weight 40
light weight 50
book weight 75
regular weight 80
normal weight 80
medium weight 100
demibold weight 180
semibold weight 180
bold weight 200
extrabold weight 205
black weight 210
heavy weight 210
roman slant 0
italic slant 100
oblique slant 110
ultracondensed width 50
extracondensed width 63
condensed width 75
semicondensed width 87
normal width 100
semiexpanded width 113
expanded width 125
extraexpanded width 150
ultraexpanded width 200
proportional spacing 0
dual spacing 90
mono spacing 100
charcell spacing 110
unknown rgba 0
rgb rgba 1
bgr rgba 2
vrgb rgba 3
vbgr rgba 4
none rgba 5
lcdnone lcdfilter 0
lcddefault lcdfilter 1
lcdlight lcdfilter 2
lcdlegacy lcdfilter 3
hintnone hintstyle 0
hintslight hintstyle 1
hintmedium hintstyle 2
hintfull hintstyle 3
<OR>, <AND>, <PLUS>, <MINUS>, <TIMES>, <DIVIDE>
These elements perform the specified operation on a list of expression elements. <or> and <and> are boolean, not bitwise.
<EQ>, <NOT_EQ>, <LESS>, <LESS_EQ>, <MORE>, <MORE_EQ>
These elements compare two values, producing a boolean result.
<NOT>
Inverts the boolean sense of its one expression element
<IF>
This element takes three expression elements; if the value of the first is true, it produces the value of the second,
otherwise it produces the value of the third.
<ALIAS>
Alias elements provide a shorthand notation for the set of common match operations needed to substitute one font family
for another. They contain a <family> element followed by optional <prefer>, <accept> and <default> elements. Fonts match-
ing the <family> element are edited to prepend the list of <prefer>ed families before the matching <family>, append the
<accept>able families after the matching <family> and append the <default> families to the end of the family list.
<FAMILY>
Holds a single font family name
<PREFER>, <ACCEPT>, <DEFAULT>
These hold a list of <family> elements to be used by the <alias> element.
EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION FILE
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION FILE
This is an example of a system-wide configuration file
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- /etc/fonts/fonts.conf file to configure system font access -->
<fontconfig>
<!--
Find fonts in these directories
-->
<dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
<!--
Accept deprecated 'mono' alias, replacing it with 'monospace'
-->
<match target="pattern">
<test qual="any" name="family"><string>mono</string></test>
<edit name="family" mode="assign"><string>monospace</string></edit>
</match>
<!--
Names not including any well known alias are given 'sans'
-->
<match target="pattern">
<test qual="all" name="family" mode="not_eq">sans</test>
<test qual="all" name="family" mode="not_eq">serif</test>
<test qual="all" name="family" mode="not_eq">monospace</test>
<edit name="family" mode="append_last"><string>sans</string></edit>
</match>
<!--
Load per-user customization file, but don't complain
if it doesn't exist
-->
<include ignore_missing="yes">~/.fonts.conf</include>
<!--
Load local customization files, but don't complain
if there aren't any
-->
<include ignore_missing="yes">conf.d</include>
<include ignore_missing="yes">local.conf</include>
<!--
Alias well known font names to available TrueType fonts.
These substitute TrueType faces for similar Type1
faces to improve screen appearance.
-->
<alias>
<family>Times</family>
<prefer><family>Times New Roman</family></prefer>
<default><family>serif</family></default>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>Helvetica</family>
<prefer><family>Arial</family></prefer>
<default><family>sans</family></default>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>Courier</family>
<prefer><family>Courier New</family></prefer>
<default><family>monospace</family></default>
</alias>
<!--
Provide required aliases for standard names
Do these after the users configuration file so that
any aliases there are used preferentially
-->
<alias>
<family>serif</family>
<prefer><family>Times New Roman</family></prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>sans</family>
<prefer><family>Arial</family></prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>monospace</family>
<prefer><family>Andale Mono</family></prefer>
</alias>
</fontconfig>
USER CONFIGURATION FILE
This is an example of a per-user configuration file that lives in ~/.fonts.conf
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- ~/.fonts.conf for per-user font configuration -->
<fontconfig>
<!--
Private font directory
-->
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>
<!--
use rgb sub-pixel ordering to improve glyph appearance on
LCD screens. Changes affecting rendering, but not matching
should always use target="font".
-->
<match target="font">
<edit name="rgba" mode="assign"><const>rgb</const></edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>
FILES
fonts.conf contains configuration information for the fontconfig library consisting of directories to look at for font
information as well as instructions on editing program specified font patterns before attempting to match the available
fonts. It is in xml format.
conf.d is the conventional name for a directory of additional configuration files managed by external applications or the
local administrator. The filenames starting with decimal digits are sorted in lexicographic order and used as additional
configuration files. All of these files are in xml format. The master fonts.conf file references this directory in an
<include> directive.
fonts.dtd is a DTD that describes the format of the configuration files.
~/.fonts.conf.d is the conventional name for a per-user directory of (typically auto-generated) configuration files,
although the actual location is specified in the global fonts.conf file.
~/.fonts.conf is the conventional location for per-user font configuration, although the actual location is specified in
the global fonts.conf file.
~/.fonts.cache-* is the conventional repository of font information that isn't found in the per-directory caches. This
file is automatically maintained by fontconfig.
SEE ALSO
fc-cat(1), fc-cache(1), fc-list(1), fc-match(1), fc-query(1)
VERSION
Fontconfig version 2.8.0
18 November 2009 FONTS-CONF(5)
