Fontconfig

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fontconfig

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/
A library for configuring and customizing font access.

fontconfig is a library for customizing and configuring fonts in a system, providing configuration, enumeration and substitution of fonts to other programs.

Applications can use fontconfig in two ways:

• by querying it for the available fonts on the system, or
• by querying it for a font matching certain parameters (comprising a pattern) as closely as possible.

To perform font matching, fontconfig stores typesetting information about all of the installed fonts, including the name of the font family, style, weight, dots per inch (DPI), and Unicode coverage. This information is also used to perform font substitution.

Features

fontconfig can:

• discover new fonts when installed automatically, removing a common source of configuration problems.
• perform font name substitution, so that appropriate alternative fonts can be selected if fonts are missing.
• identify the set of fonts required to completely cover a set of languages.
• have GUI configuration tools built as it uses an XML-based configuration file (though with autodiscovery, we believe this need is minimized).
• efficiently and quickly find the fonts you need among the set of fonts you have installed, even if you have installed thousands of fonts, while minimizing memory usage.
• be used in concert with the X Render Extension and FreeType to implement high quality, anti-aliased and subpixel rendered text on a display.

fontconfig does not:

• render the fonts themselves (this is left to FreeType or other rendering mechanisms)
• depend on the X Window System in any fashion, so that printer only applications do not have such dependencies

Documentation

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/fontconfig/fontconfig-user.html

Download

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/fontconfig/release/

Categories

• Interface:library
• Library:C
• Library:User-interface
• Programming-language:C
• Programming-language:python
• Programming-language:shell
• Runs-on:GNU/Linux
• Runs-on:Windows
• Runs-on:GNU/Hurd
• Text-creation:font
• Text-creation:font-related
• Use:library

Licensing

License

Verified by

Verified on

Notes

License

MIT

Verified by

Panos Alevropoulos

Verified on

6 August 2021

Notes

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/blob/main/COPYING

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