[Xquartz-dev] The 2.1.0 package and Apple System Fonts

[Martin Costabel]

Jeremy Huddleston wrote:
> Yes, xfontsel shows the X server's available fonts.  fontconfig is a 
> clientside API for rendering fonts.  /etc/fonts isn't part of fontconfig 
> as we Apple distributes.  Maybe it was made by macports or fink.  Look 
> in /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts for configuration and beware of fontconfig 
> conflicts when using macports and (I assume) fink (see my previous post 
> re: macports apps).

With Tiger's X11, Apple supplied the files /etc/fonts.dtd and 
/etc/fonts.conf, and these were used by fc-cache.

These files in /etc/fonts/ don't exist on Leopard, and there don't seem 
to exist other config files for configuring fc-cache on Leopard. OTOH, 
when I run fc-list or any of these fc-* programs on my Leopard here, I 
don't get the error about missing conf files. I get lists with lots of 
system fonts, but I cannot explain how they got there, apart from having 
Fink's xfontpath and applesystemfonts package installed.

On Tiger, documentation on fontconfig was very poor. The latter hasn't 
changed on Leopard. I haven't found any man pages about any of the 
fontconfig /usr/X11/bin/fc-* binaries that come with Leopard. There are 
some man pages, for example fonts-conf(5), but they don't seem to have 
made the leap to Leopard yet:
 
         FONTS-CONF(5)

NAME
        fonts.conf - Font configuration files

SYNOPSIS
           /etc/fonts/fonts.conf
           /etc/fonts/fonts.dtd
           /etc/fonts/conf.d
           ~/.fonts.conf
and so on...

In short, this is another big mess in Leopard.

-- 
Martin