NAME

fontsrv - file system access to host fonts

SYNOPSIS

fontsrv [ -m mtpt ] [ -s srvname ]

fontsrv -p path

DESCRIPTION

Fontsrv presents the host window system's fonts in the standard Plan 9 format (see It serves a virtual directory tree mounted at mtpt (if the -m option is given) and posted at srvname (default font).

The -p option changes fontsrv's behavior: rather than serve a file system, fontsrv prints to standard output the contents of the named path. If path names a directory in the served file system, fontsrv lists the directory's contents.

The fonts are arranged in a two-level tree. The root contains directories named for each system font. Each font directory contains subdirectories named for a point size and whether the subfonts are anti-aliased: 10 (bitmap) 10a (anti-aliased greyscale) 12, 12a, and so on. The font directory will synthesize additional sizes on demand: looking up 19a will synthesize the 19-point anti-aliased size if possible. Each size directory contains a font file and subfont files named x0000.bit, x0020.bit, and so on representing 32-character Unicode ranges.

Openfont (see recognizes font paths beginning with /mnt/font and implements them by invoking fontsrv; it need not be running already. See for a full discussion of font name syntaxes.

EXAMPLES

List the fonts on the system:

% fontsrv &
% 9p ls font

or:

% fontsrv -p .

Run using the operating system's Monaco as the fixed-width font:

% acme -F /mnt/font/Monaco/13a/font

Run using the same font:

% font=/mnt/font/Monaco/13a/font sam

SOURCE

/src/cmd/fontsrv

BUGS

Due to OS X restrictions, fontsrv does not fork itself into the background when serving a user-level file system.

Fontsrv has no support for X11 fonts; on X11 systems, it will serve an empty top-level directory.