How to look for appropriate fonts ?

[Spiros Bousbouras]

I have a Debian installation where
-adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1 is just
right for terminal emulators ; I want a monospace font of course and
the size is right. But with a new Devuan installation , this font is
a bit too small. So the question is , how do I go about searching for
an appropriate font ? I know of the existence of xlsfonts and
xlsfonts -ll <pattern> prints output which is probably relevant but
I don't know how to interpret it. Apart from interpreting it , is there
some tool which you can instruct to "show me all the fonts on the system
for which parameters such and such are within certain bounds" or is it
a case of writing a script which will parse the output of xlsfonts and
pick up the values I'm interested in ?

It would also be nice if I got a font where 0 (zero) has a dot inside to
make it more easy to distinguish from O (capital O). The aforementioned
font does not but , if there is an automatic way to search for that too ,
it would be a plus.

I see that the xterm I'm running is started with the options (among others)
-fa 'DejaVu Sans Mono:size=20' -fn -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1

.The man page is not clear enough to me whether both are relevant to the output
I'm seeing or one overrides the other. On xterm 0 does have a dot inside but
on an eterm started with the same adobe font it does not so I'm thinking that
for xterm perhaps only the -fa is relevant. Lower case ell looks different
between the two emulators and nicer on xterm .

Finally , for "cross-referencing" purposes I will remind of a thread from 2018
which asks a somewhat analogous question :

From: gaz...@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer,comp.windows.x
Subject: Looking for a really *BIG* terminal font for Linux (xterm)
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2018 14:52:32 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <pq4tvg$qqo$1...@news.xmission.com>

The other posts were
Message-ID: <CknxD.91524$SG2....@fx29.iad>
Message-ID: <pq51k9$bhe$1...@dont-email.me>
Message-ID: <g2sfb1...@mid.individual.net>
Message-ID: <pqfpv8$i4s$1...@news.xmission.com>
Message-ID: <g31lq0...@mid.individual.net>

--
Cost does indeed vary as the product of the number of men and the number of
months. Progress does not. Hence the man-month as a unit for measuring the
size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth. It implies that men and
months are interchangeable.
"The mythical man-month"

[Ivan Shmakov]

[...]

> So the question is, how do I go about searching for an appropriate font?

I think the tool you're looking for is xfontsel(1). You may also
find xfd(1) handy.

> I know of the existence of xlsfonts and xlsfonts -ll <pattern> prints
> output which is probably relevant but I don't know how to interpret it.

(I believe xlsfonts needs -fn to specify a pattern.)

> Apart from interpreting it, is there some tool which you can instruct

> to "show me all the fonts on the system for which parameters such and
> such are within certain bounds"

Aside of that xfontsel(1) also supports -pattern, can't say I'm
aware of any such tool.

[...]

> I see that the xterm I'm running is started with the options
> (among others) -fa 'DejaVu Sans Mono:size=20'
> -fn -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1 .

> The man page is not clear enough to me whether both are relevant to
> the output I'm seeing or one overrides the other.

It's pretty clear in the copy I have at hand:

man> -fa pattern

man> If you specify both -fa and the X Toolkit option -fn,
man> the -fa setting overrides the latter.

FWIW, my long-time preference is to use Terminus fonts, the
X version of which is provided by the xfonts-terminus package.
Depending on the X display resolution, they can be configured
as follows in XRDB (which typically gets initialized from
~/.Xresources at the X session initialization time.) See also
http://bugs.debian.org/685329 .

!! Smaller fonts
XTerm.VT100.font2:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--12-120-72-72-c-60-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font3:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font4:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--18-180-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font5:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font6:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--22-220-72-72-c-110-iso10646-1

!! Larger fonts
XTerm.VT100.font2:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--18-180-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font3:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--22-220-72-72-c-110-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font4:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--24-240-72-72-c-120-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font5:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--28-280-72-72-c-140-iso10646-1
XTerm.VT100.font6:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--32-320-72-72-c-160-iso10646-1

--
FSF associate member #7257 http://am-1.org/~ivan/

[Javier]

Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a Debian installation where
> -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1 is just
> right for terminal emulators ; I want a monospace font of course and
> the size is right. But with a new Devuan installation , this font is
> a bit too small.

If you are using multiple distros you can override the system fonts
and have a font directories in your $HOME:

MYFONTDIR=${HOME}/local/share/fonts
mkdir -p ${MYFONTDIR}

Place the font subdirs under ${HOME}/local/share/fonts
And create/update the index files fonts.dir, fonts.scale:

mkfontscale ${MYFONTDIR}/*/
mkfontdir ${MYFONTDIR}/*/

and add those dirs the font path

xset +fp ${MYFONTDIR}/*/
xset fp rehash

That should override the sytem font (although I have not tested that)

> So the question is , how do I go about searching for
> an appropriate font ?
>

> Message-ID: <g31lq0...@mid.individual.net>

As Jens Schweikhardt said in the 2018 thread, search for packages with
'monospaced font', or 'programmer font' or 'terminal font' in your distro.
I get a lot of hits in Arch Linux:

yaourt -Ss monospaced

extra/adobe-source-code-pro-fonts
Monospaced font family for user interface and coding environments
community/tamsyn-font 1.11-4 [installed]
A monospaced bitmap font for the console and X11
community/ttf-fantasque-sans-mono 1.8.0-2
Font family with a great monospaced variant for programmers
community/ttf-iosevka-nerd 2.1.0-1
Typeface family designed for coding, terminal use and technical documents
(Nerd Fonts)
...
aur/nerd-fonts-sf-mono 3.0.2-1 (8) (0.48)
Monospaced variant of San Francisco. Sourced directly from Apple, patched
with the Nerd Fonts Patcher
aur/ttf-proggy-vector 1.1.5-1 (4) (0.01)
Proggy Vector is Monospaced, Fixed-width TrueType font optimized for C,C++
programming.
aur/uw-ttyp0-font 1.3-6 (12) (0.00)
Bitmap monospaced font with unicode support and Powerline symbols
aur/woff-intel-one-mono 1.2.1-2 (13) (7.77)
Expressive monospaced font family that’s built with clarity, legibility,
and the needs of developers in mind
aur/nerd-fonts-git 1:3.0.0.r30.g58504d670-1 (16) (0.47)
Iconic font aggregator, collection, and patcher: 34 patched fonts (77k
variations). Includes popular glyph collections such as Font Awesome &
fonts such as Hack
...

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2023 10:05:40 -0000 (UTC)
Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a Debian installation where
> -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1 is just
> right for terminal emulators ; I want a monospace font of course and
> the size is right. But with a new Devuan installation , this font is
> a bit too small. So the question is , how do I go about searching for
> an appropriate font ? I know of the existence of xlsfonts and
> xlsfonts -ll <pattern> prints output which is probably relevant but
> I don't know how to interpret it.

I read
www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/specs/XLFD/xlfd.html and ,
based on the information there , I understand a lot more the output of
xlsfonts and about fonts in general. The page has

SN POINT_SIZE Field
[...]

POINT_SIZE and RESOLUTION_Y are used by X clients to query fonts
according to device-independent size to maintain constant text size on
the display regardless of the PIXEL_SIZE used for the font.

[I don't know what the SN is ; perhaps it's a typo] Based on what it says ,
I shouldn't be getting different sizes since I asked for the same font
which means in particular that all the parameters related to physical
appearance were the same. I should note that the Debian installation is
on a 22 inch monitor with resolution 1680 x 1050 whereas the Devuan
is for a 21.5 inch monitor with resolution 1920 x 1080. Perhaps this is
the reason for the difference in size but still , the impression I get
from ...xlfd.html is that the aim is for {same parameters imply
same appearance on different devices}.

--
and then listening in quizzical bemusement from the mid-1970s onward as the
composer evidently convinced himself he had been on a road to nowhere, and
that what he really needed to be doing was to compose, among other things,
all of the song cycles and symphonies that Mahler and Shostakovich never
lived long enough to write.
http://5against4.com/2021/06/16/krzysztof-penderecki-complete-music-for-string-quartet-string-trio

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2023 18:27:55 +0000
Ivan Shmakov <iv...@siamics.netNOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
> [...]
>
> > So the question is, how do I go about searching for an appropriate font?
>
> I think the tool you're looking for is xfontsel(1). You may also
> find xfd(1) handy.
>
> > I know of the existence of xlsfonts and xlsfonts -ll <pattern> prints
> > output which is probably relevant but I don't know how to interpret it.
>
> (I believe xlsfonts needs -fn to specify a pattern.)

Looking at the man page more carefully , you are correct. However
xlsfonts -ll -fn '*adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1'
xlsfonts -ll '*adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1'

produce the same output.

> > I see that the xterm I'm running is started with the options
> > (among others) -fa 'DejaVu Sans Mono:size=20'
> > -fn -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1 .
>
> > The man page is not clear enough to me whether both are relevant to
> > the output I'm seeing or one overrides the other.
>
> It's pretty clear in the copy I have at hand:
>
> man> -fa pattern
>
> man> If you specify both -fa and the X Toolkit option -fn,
> man> the -fa setting overrides the latter.

Yes , I saw the Devuan man page says so but the Debian older one does
not.

> FWIW, my long-time preference is to use Terminus fonts, the
> X version of which is provided by the xfonts-terminus package.
> Depending on the X display resolution, they can be configured
> as follows in XRDB (which typically gets initialized from
> ~/.Xresources at the X session initialization time.) See also
> http://bugs.debian.org/685329 .
>
> !! Smaller fonts
> XTerm.VT100.font2:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--12-120-72-72-c-60-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font3:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font4:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--18-180-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font5:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font6:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--22-220-72-72-c-110-iso10646-1
>
> !! Larger fonts
> XTerm.VT100.font2:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--18-180-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font3:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--22-220-72-72-c-110-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font4:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--24-240-72-72-c-120-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font5:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--28-280-72-72-c-140-iso10646-1
> XTerm.VT100.font6:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--32-320-72-72-c-160-iso10646-1

How do you distinguish between large and small ? Because some fonts appear on
both lists above.

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2023 20:11:00 +0000
Javier <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have a Debian installation where
> > -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1 is just
> > right for terminal emulators ; I want a monospace font of course and
> > the size is right. But with a new Devuan installation , this font is
> > a bit too small.
>
> If you are using multiple distros you can override the system fonts
> and have a font directories in your $HOME:
>
> MYFONTDIR=${HOME}/local/share/fonts
> mkdir -p ${MYFONTDIR}

I don't think that I was seeing different sizes because the system ignored
my font specification so overriding system fonts would not help.

[Javier]

Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> !! Smaller fonts
>> XTerm.VT100.font2:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--12-120-72-72-c-60-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font3:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font4:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--18-180-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font5:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font6:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--22-220-72-72-c-110-iso10646-1
>>
>> !! Larger fonts
>> XTerm.VT100.font2:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--18-180-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font3:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--22-220-72-72-c-110-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font4:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--24-240-72-72-c-120-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font5:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--28-280-72-72-c-140-iso10646-1
>> XTerm.VT100.font6:-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--32-320-72-72-c-160-iso10646-1
>
> How do you distinguish between large and small ? Because some fonts appear on
> both lists above.

Those are two different lists for fonts (likely for 2 different
monitors with different pixel size). XTerm has only six slots for
fonts, which you cycle with Shift-Keypad Add, Shift-Keypad Substract.

Six fonts were enough for everybody in the 80-90s, with small display
resolutions, and not many fonts defined in the system. Nowadays XTerm
should be compiled with at least a dozen slots for fonts. I don't
know if the reason for that limitation is memory footprint, or not
wanting to have an oversized font menu, but with the hardware that
people use nowadasys a dozen of fonts wouldn't hurt.

[Javier]

Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think that I was seeing different sizes because the system ignored
> my font specification so overriding system fonts would not help.

My guess was that either the upstream font devs changed something, or
that Debian devs decided to patch the package, so having a local copy
of the "good version" of the font in your $HOME should help.

Given the hectic the pace of changes in the modern world, nowadays
I am resorting more and more to keeping personal snapshots of the
"good versions" of things in my own hard disk (fonts, documentation,
program sources).

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> On 2023-06-27, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:

>>>>> On Sun, 25 Jun 2023 18:27:55 +0000, Ivan Shmakov wrote:

>> (I believe xlsfonts needs -fn to specify a pattern.)

> Looking at the man page more carefully , you are correct. However

> xlsfonts -ll -fn
> '*adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1'
> xlsfonts -ll '*adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1'

I see; -fn is apparently only needed when the pattern begins with
a dash. (And given that 'new,' XLFD-compliant X font names
universally begin with a dash, so should the patterns. Although,
assuming an ordinary setup, * or ? will of course also work.)

>>> I see that the xterm I'm running is started with the options
>>> (among others) -fa 'DejaVu Sans Mono:size=20'
>>> -fn -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1 .

Note that with -fn (were it not be overridden by -fa), you're
requesting a 25 pixels high font specifically. Depending on
the physical dimensions of the pixel on a given screen (also
expressed as a 'dots per inch,' or dpi, measure; see xdpyinfo
output for instance), the physical size of the font may vary.

AIUI, the idea was that by omitting the pixel size and
resolution fields, like, say:

-fn -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--"*-180-*-*"-m-150-iso10646-1

the user would've been requesting the server to find an
appropriate font given its physical "point size," but so far
as I can tell, at least for bitmap (i. e., non-scalable) fonts,
this has failed to materialize in practice.

[...]

> How do you distinguish between large and small? Because some fonts

> appear on both lists above.

On my system, Terminus is available in 11 distinct pixel sizes:

$ xlsfonts -fn -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--"*-*-*-*-c-*"-iso10646-1 \
| uniq | nl -ba
1 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--0-0-72-72-c-0-iso10646-1
2 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--12-120-72-72-c-60-iso10646-1
3 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
4 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
5 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--17-120-100-100-c-0-iso10646-1
6 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--18-180-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
7 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1
8 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--22-220-72-72-c-110-iso10646-1
9 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--24-240-72-72-c-120-iso10646-1
10 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--28-280-72-72-c-140-iso10646-1
11 -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--32-320-72-72-c-160-iso10646-1
$

Removing the (not particularly useful here) 0 px high font, as
well as the one having 0 px average width (which I'm not sure
about) still leaves 9 fonts to configure. Back in the day, XTerm
only supported 6 slots for fonts, corresponding to the 6 entries
in its Control+RightMouseButton "VT Fonts" menu (now there're 7),
hence I've decided to make two separate configuration files,
one having the biggest 6 fonts of the 9 "valid" ones above, and
another with the smallest 6; for user to choose whichever file
they see fit, presumably depending on the screen's resolution.

Ideally, XTerm should've allowed an arbitrary number of fonts
here (with some users preferring switching between just two or
three, others using a set that includes not only different font
sizes, but different actual fonts as well; such as by including
-misc-fixed- alongside -xos4-terminus-), but it doesn't seem to
be doable in a nice and clean way with libXt and X resources.

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Wed, 28 Jun 2023 20:27:33 +0000
Ivan Shmakov <iv...@siamics.netNOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
> Ideally, XTerm should've allowed an arbitrary number of fonts
> here (with some users preferring switching between just two or
> three, others using a set that includes not only different font
> sizes, but different actual fonts as well; such as by including
> -misc-fixed- alongside -xos4-terminus-), but it doesn't seem to
> be doable in a nice and clean way with libXt and X resources.

Or have an escape sequence which allows you to change fonts of a running
instance. eterm has them and as a result I have the following 2 BASH
functions :

large-font () {
printf '\033]50;%s\007' '-adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--25-180-100-100-m-150-iso10646-1'
}

small-font () {
printf '\033]50;%s\007' '-b&h-lucidatypewriter-bold-r-normal-sans-18-180-75-75-m-110-iso10646-1'
}