Font Support in the Solaris X Server

The Solaris X Window System provides font support in both the X11 server and the Display PostScript (DPS) extension. Font formats from numerous vendors can be used to display text in English or foreign languages, including Asian languages. Symbol fonts can be used to display mathematical equations. The Solaris environment provides 55 Latin fonts for west European text and two symbol fonts. Other fonts can also be added to the system using the Font Administrator GUI or command line tools distributed with Solaris.

X Font Server

The Solaris X server can be a client of the X font server xfs. The X font server renders fonts for the X server. The Solaris X font server supports the same fonts as the standard X font server, plus TrueType fonts from Sun. It does not support Sun's proprietary F3 font format. Support for Type 1 fonts is provided via the Type 1 interpreter donated to the X Consortium.

xfs can be started manually or automatically. For more information on this command, see the xfs(1) man page.

Available Font Formats

Fonts from different vendors come in different formats. Table 4-1 and Table 4-2 list the various font formats, their vendors, and the associated file types supported by the Solaris environment. Table 4-1 lists outline fonts; Table 4-2 lists bitmap fonts.

Table 4-1 Outline Font Formats

Table 4-2 Bitmap Font Formats

The fonts provided by the Solaris X server are located in the /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts directory. For more information on the directory structure, see Locating Fonts.

The Solaris environment is configured so that most X11 fonts are also available in DPS (see Table 4-3). DPS supports a slightly different set of fonts than those supported by X11.

Table 4-3 Font File Availability

Optional Font Package

Fonts needed by end-user applications are installed with the End-User Cluster. However, some unusual applications may need fonts in the Developer Cluster. For these applications, the package to add is the SUNWxwoft package. It is not necessary to install the entire Developer Cluster.

Associated Files

The Solaris environment provides files with these extensions. They are not intended to be edited.

• .afm Adobe Font Metrics files read by client for kerning information

• .map F3 files read by X11 and DPS for encoding purposes

• .trans F3 files read by DPS for composite font construction

• .ps PostScript Files for composite font and PostScript resource construction

• .enc Encoding files used by X11 and DPS

• .upr Display PostScript resource files

• .ttmap Encoding file for TrueType fonts