README.md revision c7b4381a
1libXfont - X font handling library for server & utilities 2--------------------------------------------------------- 3 4libXfont provides the core of the legacy X11 font system, handling the index 5files (fonts.dir, fonts.alias, fonts.scale), the various font file formats, 6and rasterizing them. It is used by the X servers, and will eventually be 7used by the X Font Server (xfs), but should not be used by normal X11 clients. 8X11 clients access fonts via either the new APIs in libXft, or the legacy 9APIs in libX11. 10 11This version of libXfont is not compatible with xfs, or with the legacy 12bdftopcf utility; these packages require libXfont 1.5, not libXfont 2.0 13or later. The two versions can be installed in parallel, and eventually 14the need for 1.5 will go away. We apologize for the inconvenience. 15 16libXfont supports a number of compression and font formats, and the 17configure script takes various options to enable or disable them: 18 19- Compression types: 20 21 * gzip - always enabled, no option to disable, requires libz 22 23 * bzip2 - disabled by default, enable via --with-bzip2, requires libbz2 24 25- Font formats: 26 27 * builtins - copies of the "fixed" & "cursor" fonts required by the 28 X protocol are built into the library so the X server always 29 has the fonts it requires to start up. Accessed via the 30 special 'built-ins' entry in the X server font path. 31 Enabled by default, disable via --disable-builtins. 32 33 * freetype - handles scalable font formats including OpenType, FreeType, 34 and PostScript formats. Requires FreeType2 library. 35 Can also be used to handle bdf & bitmap pcf font formats. 36 Enabled by default, disable via --disable-freetype. 37 38 * bdf bitmap fonts - text file format for distributing fonts, described 39 in https://www.x.org/docs/BDF/bdf.pdf specification. Normally 40 not used by the X server at runtime, as the fonts distributed 41 by X.Org in bdf format are compiled with bdftopcf when 42 installing/packaging them. 43 Enabled by default, disable via --disable-bdfformat. 44 45 * pcf bitmap fonts - standard bitmap font format since X11R5 in 1991, 46 used for all bitmap fonts installed from X.Org packages. 47 Compiled format is architecture independent. 48 As noted above, usually produced by bdftopcf. 49 Enabled by default, disable via --disable-pcfformat. 50 51 * snf bitmap fonts - standard bitmap font format prior to X11R5 in 1991, 52 remains only for backwards compatibility. Unlike pcf, snf files 53 are architecture specific, and contain less font information 54 than pcf files. snf fonts are deprecated and support for them 55 may be removed in future libXfont releases. 56 Disabled by default, enable via --disable-snfformat. 57 58- Font services: 59 60 * xfs font servers - allows retreiving fonts as a client of an xfs server. 61 Enabled by default, disable via --disable-fc (font client). 62 63 If enabled, you can also use the standard libxtrans flags to 64 configure which transports can be used to connect to xfs: 65 66 --enable-unix-transport Enable UNIX domain socket transport 67 --enable-tcp-transport Enable TCP socket transport (IPv4) 68 --enable-ipv6 Enable IPv6 support for tcp-transport 69 --enable-local-transport Enable os-specific local transport 70 71 (Change --enable to --disable to force disabling support.) 72 The default setting is to enable all of the transports the 73 configure script can find OS support for. 74 75-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 76 77All questions regarding this software should be directed at the 78Xorg mailing list: 79 80 https://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg 81 82The master development code repository can be found at: 83 84 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libXfont 85 86Please submit bug reports and requests to merge patches there. 87 88For patch submission instructions, see: 89 90 https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/SubmittingPatches 91