Practical Linux

Viewing X11 Fonts

Use the xlsfonts program to list the fonts recognized by the X Window System. Use wildcards or patterns to match font names to find specific fonts. For example, to list all bold fonts from the Adobe Utopia family, use xlsfonts with the -fn (font) option and a wildcard, like so:

# xlsfonts -fn *utopia*bold*
-adobe-utopia-bold-i-normal-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
-adobe-utopia-bold-r-normal-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1

Use the xlsfonts program to find font names for the -fn X11 Toolkit option, or with the xfontsel or xfd clients discussed in this section.

xlsfonts outputs the raw X font names, which can be confusing at first. The naming convention, although cryptic, is designed to allow selection of the proper font, including all its variations. ...