Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!milano!titan!janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com
From: janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com (Bill Janssen)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Finding a font [Was: Do symbol fonts exist?]
Message-ID: <2421@titan.sw.mcc.com>
Date: 1 Jun 89 22:30:47 GMT
References: <1985@husc6.harvard.edu>
Sender: janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com
Reply-To: janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com (Bill Janssen)
Distribution: all
Organization: MCC Software Technology
Lines: 20
In-reply-to: nowlin@gramian.harvard.edu (Bill Nowlin)

In article <1985@husc6.harvard.edu>, nowlin@gramian (Bill Nowlin) writes:
>Either way I think I'll have to use the fonts in some brute force manner
>directly from my program, since I can't count on their existence on some
>other system.

This is an interesting point.  How does the application programmer name
a font that is guaranteed to exist?  The Andrew folks do it by distributing
a set of fonts, and calling xim_AddAndrewFontPath() to add them to the font
path when starting an application.  MCC DELI does it less safely by assuming
that there are three families that will always be present, and using
(xlib:list-font-names) to get the specific mappings from "*tim*", "*helv*",
and "*cour*".  I suppose that one could use (xlib:list-font-names) on
"*", to get some font (but then it might be a symbol font!).

What is the force behind, and status of, the font-naming conventions in
doc/fontnames/fnames.txt?  Are they something that all X Consortium
members have agreed to?  Are they only "suggested"?  Is there general
agreement that they are a good thing?

Bill