# Fonts

Related articles

- Font configuration
- Infinality-bundle+fonts
- Java Runtime Environment Fonts
- MS Fonts

From Wikipedia:

  A computer font (or font) is an electronic data file containing a set of glyphs, characters, or symbols such as dingbats.

Note that certain font licenses may impose some legal limitations.

## Font formats

Most computer fonts used today are in either bitmap or outline data formats.

Bitmap fonts
  Consist of a matrix of dots or pixels representing the image of each glyph in each face and size.
Outline or vector fonts
  Use Bézier curves, drawing instructions and mathematical formulae to describe each glyph, which make the character outlines scalable to any size.

### Common extensions

- `bdf` and `bdf.gz` – bitmap fonts, bitmap distribution format and gzip compressed `bdf`
- `pcf` and `pcf.gz` – bitmaps, portable compiled font and gzip compressed `pcf`
- `psf`, `psfu`, `psf.gz` and `psfu.gz` – bitmaps, PC screen font, PC screen font Unicode and the gzipped versions (not compatible with X.Org)
- `pfa` and `pfb` – outline fonts, PostScript font ASCII and PostScript font binary. PostScript fonts carry built-in printer instructions.
- `ttf` – outline, TrueType font. Originally designed as a replacement for the PostScript fonts.
- `otf` – outline, OpenType font. TrueType with PostScript typographic instructions.

For most purposes, the technical differences between TrueType and OpenType can be ignored, some fonts with a `ttf` extension are actually OpenType fonts.

### Other formats

The typesetting application, TeX, and its companion font software, Metafont, render characters using their own methods. Some of the file extensions used for fonts by these two programs are `*pk`, `*gf`, `mf` and `vf`.

FontForge, a font editing application, can store fonts in its native text-based format, `sfd`, spline font database.

The SVG format also has its own font description method.

## Installation

There are various methods for installing fonts.

### Pacman

Fonts and font collections in the enabled repositories can be installed using pacman. Available fonts may be found by using:

    $ pacman -Ss font

Or to search for `ttf` fonts only:

    $ pacman -Ss ttf

### Creating a package

You should give pacman the ability to manage your fonts, which is done by creating an Arch package. These can also be shared with the community in the AUR. Here is an example of how to create a basic package. To learn more about building packages, read PKGBUILD.

    pkgname=ttf-fontname
    pkgver=1.0
    pkgrel=1
    pkgdesc="custom fonts"
    arch=('any')
    depends=('fontconfig' 'xorg-font-utils')
    source=("http://someurl.org/$pkgname.tar.bz2")
    install=$pkgname.install

    package() {
      install -d "$pkgdir/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
      cp -dpr --no-preserve=ownership "$srcdir/$pkgname/"*.ttf "$pkgdir/usr/share/fonts/TTF/"
    }

This PKGBUILD assumes the fonts are TrueType. An install file (`ttf-fontname.install`) will also need to be created to update the font cache:

    post_install() {
      echo -n "Updating font cache... "
      fc-cache -fs >/dev/null
      mkfontscale /usr/share/fonts/TTF /usr/share/fonts/Type1
      mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/TTF /usr/share/fonts/Type1
      echo "done"
    }

    post_upgrade() {
      post_install
    }

    post_remove() {
      post_install
    }

For a more convenient package creation from ttf-fonts you can also use makefontpkg from the AUR.

### Manual installation

The recommended way of adding fonts that are not in the repositories to your system is described in #Creating a package. This gives pacman the ability to remove or update them at a later time. Fonts can alternately be installed manually as well.

To install fonts system-wide (available for all users), move the folder to the `/usr/share/fonts/` directory. To install fonts for only a single user, use `~/.local/share/fonts` (`~/.fonts/` is now deprecated).

For Xserver to load fonts directly (as opposed to the use of a font server) the directory for your newly added font must be added with a FontPath entry. This entry is located in the Files section of your Xorg configuration file (e.g. `/etc/X11/xorg.conf` or `/etc/xorg.conf`). See #Older applications for more detail.

Then update the fontconfig font cache:

    $ fc-cache -vf

### Manual installation: advanced method

Manual installation and maintenance of your font resources may be especially useful if your collection is more specialized, e.g. if you use commercial fonts, if you use fonts in different formats, if you often install and remove font files, or if you just feel you need more control and better access than offered by the package manager. There are numerous benefits to such an approach:

- You can avoid installation of multiple copies of the same family in different versions and formats (one of the most common reasons for rendering issues).
- You can use multiple and non-standard physical sources of font files (e.g. an additional hard drive, a separate partition).
- You can avoid relying on huge and cryptic local font sources which possibly contain 5 families you need and 55 you don't need (TeX Live & `09-texlive-fonts.conf`, random font collections from the AUR, etc).
- You can avoid rendering issues because your fontconfig settings were tuned to a different format but the one installed in your system.
- You can quickly verify which families in which format(s) are present in the system and available for applications by visually inspecting the content of the main font directory (as a result, you don't need sophisticated and heavy-on-resources font management applications: gtk2fontsel and basic CLI tools like `fc-query` from fontconfig package will do the job even better and faster).
- When you install or upgrade a single font, the same version will be available for all applications, including LaTeX related software.
- If necessary, you can quickly enable / disable a particular family because you know where exactly it can be found (useful for debugging).
- You don't need to worry about redundant `/etc/fonts/conf.avail/nn-foo.conf` fontconfig files, potentially conflicting with your rendering settings (especially when you are using a customized font configuration and patched libraries).
- In the long run, you save time needed to resolve issues and eliminate conflicts caused by careless use of the package manager.

In practical terms, there are at least a few ways to achieve this, which, if necessary, can be adopted by any package manager. The one described below has proven to be very efficient and secure even with large font collections.

- We are going to separate font source locations (e.g. `/usr/share/fonts.avail`: this is where our fonts will be stored) from a directory containing symbolic links to the families in use (`/usr/share/fonts`).

- Each family is going to be located in a separate, clearly named subdirectory. The naming convention should be consistent and unambiguous, for instance:

    <ttf|otf|t1>-<optional_global_group_or_foundry_name>-<font_family_name>

This way the content of the source directory will look like this:

    $ ls /usr/share/fonts.avail

    /usr/share/fonts.avail/otf-heuristica
    /usr/share/fonts.avail/ttf-liberation
    /usr/share/fonts.avail/ttf-ms-arial
    ...

- We are not going to touch TeX Live font directories to avoid issues with LaTeX software. Instead, since we can use multiple locations, we will create symlinks in `/usr/share/fonts`, giving applications access to particular families:

    # cd /usr/share/fonts
    # ln -s ../fonts.avail/otf-heuristica .
    # ln -s /opt/texlive/texmf-dist/fonts/truetype/public/opensans ttf-texlive-open.sans

The result:

    $ ls /usr/share/fonts

    ttf-liberation        -> ..fonts.avail/ttf-liberation
    ttf-ms-arial          -> ..fonts.avail/ttf-ms-arial
    otf-heuristica        -> ..fonts.avail/otf-heuristica
    otf-texlive-tex.gyre  -> /opt/texlive/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/public/tex-gyre
    ttf-texlive-open.sans -> /opt/texlive/texmf-dist/fonts/truetype/public/opensans
    ...

Finally, you may want to run the usual:

    # fc-cache && mkfontscale && mkfontdir

A similar approach can be found in TeX Live Wiki article, but it's way simpler and describes a per-user scenario rather than a global implementation.

### Older applications

With older applications that do not support fontconfig (e.g. GTK+ 1.x applications, and `xfontsel`) the index will need to be created in the font directory:

    $ mkfontscale
    $ mkfontdir

Or to include more than one folder with one command:

    $ for dir in /font/dir1/ /font/dir2/; do xset +fp $dir; done && xset fp rehash

At times the X server may fail to load the fonts directory and you will need to rescan all the `fonts.dir` files:

    # xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/misc # Inform the X server of new directories
    # xset fp rehash                # Forces a new rescan

To check that the font(s) is included:

    $ xlsfonts | grep fontname

Note: Many packages will automatically configure Xorg to use the font upon installation. If that is the case with your font, this step is not necessary.

This can also be set globally in `/etc/X11/xorg.conf` or `/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d`.

Here is an example of the section that must be added to `/etc/X11/xorg.conf`. Add or remove paths based on your particular font requirements.

    # Let X.Org know about the custom font directories
    Section "Files"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/cantarell"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/encodings"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
        FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/util"
    EndSection

### Pango Warnings

When Pango is in use on your system it will read from fontconfig to sort out where to source fonts.

    (process:5741): Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. engine-type='PangoRenderFc', script='common'
    (process:5741): Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. engine-type='PangoRenderFc', script='latin'

If you are seeing errors similar to this and/or seeing blocks instead of characters in your application then you need to add fonts and update the font cache. This example uses the ttf-liberation fonts to illustrate the solution and runs as root to enable them system-wide.

    # pacman -S ttf-liberation
      -- output abbreviated, assumes installation succeeded --

    # fc-cache -vfs
    /usr/share/fonts: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 3 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/TTF: caching, new cache contents: 16 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/encodings: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 1 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/encodings/large: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/util: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
    /var/cache/fontconfig: cleaning cache directory
    fc-cache: succeeded

You can test for a default font being set like so:

    # fc-match
    LiberationMono-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Mono" "Regular"

## Console fonts

By default, the virtual console uses the kernel built-in font and ASCII-based character set, but both can be easily changed.

The kbd package provides tools to change virtual console font and font mapping. Available fonts are saved in the `/usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/` directory. A console font is limited to either a standard 256, or 512 characters. Using 512 characters reduces the number of available colours from 16 to 8.

Keymaps, the connection between the key pressed and the character used by the computer, are found in the subdirectories of `/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/`.

Note: Replacing the font can cause issues with programs that expect a standard VGA-style font, such as those using line drawing graphics.

### Previewing and testing

Tip: An organized library of images for previewing is available: Linux console fonts screenshots.

The available glyphs or letters in the font can also be viewed as a table with using showconsolefont:

    $ showconsolefont

The setfont utility may be used to temporarily change the font, so that the user can consider its use as the default. Just pass the name of the font (they are located in `/usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/`). For example:

    $ setfont lat2-16

If the newly changed font is not suitable, a return to the default font with the following command (even if the console display is totally unreadable, this command will still work, just type the command "blindly"):

    $ setfont

Note: setfont only works on the console currently being used. Any other consoles, active or inactive, remain unaffected.

### Changing the default font

The `FONT` and `FONT_MAP` variables in `/etc/vconsole.conf` are used to change the default font. See `man 5 vconsole.conf` for details.

For displaying characters such as Č, ž, đ, š or Ł, ę, ą, ś using the font `lat2-16.psfu.gz`:

    /etc/vconsole.conf

    ...
    FONT=lat2-16

It means that second part of ISO/IEC 8859 characters are used with size 16. You can change font size using other values (e.g. `lat2-08`). For the regions determined by 8859 specification, look at the Wikipedia table.

Note that most console fonts already include an appropriate character map built in, and so do not need a `FONT_MAP` setting.

To use the specified font in early userspace, use the `consolefont` hook in `/etc/mkinitcpio.conf`. See Mkinitcpio#HOOKS for more information.

If the fonts seems to not change on boot, or change only temporarily, it is most likely that they got reset when graphics driver was initialized and console was switched to framebuffer. To avoid this, load your graphics driver earlier. See for example Kernel Mode Setting#Early KMS start, [1] or other ways to setup your framebuffer before `/etc/vconsole.conf` is applied.

The console driver offers full backward compatibility with obsolete EGA/VGA graphics, and so is very limited. For an alternative console solution based on full Unicode fonts and modern graphics adapters, see fbterm.

## Font packages

This is a selective list that includes many font packages from the AUR along with those in the official repositories. Fonts are tagged "Unicode" if they have wide Unicode support, see the project or Wikipedia pages for detail.

Github user Ternstor has created a python script that generates HTML documents with PNG images of all the fonts in the AUR and the official repositories: [2].

### Braille

- ttf-ubraille - Font containing Unicode symbols for braille

### International users

Applications and browsers select and display fonts depending upon fontconfig preferences and available font glyph for Unicode text. To list installed fonts for a particular language, issue a command `fc-list :lang="two letter language code"`. For instance, to list installed Arabic fonts or fonts supporting Arabic glyph:

    $ fc-list :lang=ar | cut -d: -f1

    /usr/share/fonts/TTF/FreeMono.ttf
    /usr/share/fonts/TTF/DejaVuSansCondensed.ttf
    /usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom/DroidKufi-Bold.ttf
    /usr/share/fonts/TTF/DejaVuSansMono.ttf
    /usr/share/fonts/TTF/FreeSerif.ttf

To properly render fonts for multilingual websites like Wikipedia or this Arch Linux wiki, install these packages: ttf-freefont, ttf-arphic-uming, ttf-baekmuk

#### Arabic & Urdu

- ttf-qurancomplex-fonts - Fonts by King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex in al-Madinah al-Munawwarah (AUR)
- ttf-amiri - A classical Arabic typeface in Naskh style poineered by Amiria Press (AUR)
- ttf-sil-lateef - Unicode Arabic font from SIL (AUR)
- ttf-sil-scheherazade - Unicode Arabic font from SIL (AUR)
- ttf-arabeyes-fonts - Collection of free Arabic fonts (AUR)

#### Persian

- ttf-persian-irfonts - Official I.R. Iran Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology (SCICT) standard persian fonts series (AUR)
- ttf-persian-borna - Borna Rayaneh Persian B font series (AUR)
- ttf-persian-x2 - X Series 2 fonts are built on freely available fonts and extended to support Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, Dari, Uzbek, Kurdish, Uighur, old Turkish (Ottoman) and modern Turkish (Roman). (AUR)

#### Birman

- ttf-myanmar3 - Font for Myanmar/Burmese script (AUR)

#### Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese

##### (Mainly) Chinese

- ttf-tw - Kai and Song traditional Chinese font from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan (AUR).
- wqy-microhei - A Sans-Serif style high quality CJKV outline font.
- wqy-zenhei - Hei Ti Style (sans-serif) Chinese Outline font embedded with bitmapped Song Ti (also supporting Japanese (partial) and Korean characters).
- ttf-arphic-ukai - Kaiti (brush stroke) Unicode font (enabling anti-aliasing is suggested)
- ttf-arphic-uming - Mingti (printed) Unicode font
- opendesktop-fonts - New Sung font, previously is ttf-fireflysung package
- wqy-bitmapfont - Bitmapped Song Ti (serif) Chinese font
- ttf-hannom - Chinese and Vietnamese TrueType font

##### Japanese

- otf-ipafont - Formal style Japanese Gothic (sans-serif) and Mincho (serif) fonts set; one of the highest quality open source font. Default of openSUSE-ja.
- ttf-vlgothic - Japanese Gothic fonts. Default of Debian/Fedora/Vine Linux (AUR)
- ttf-mplus - Modern Gothic style Japanese outline fonts. It includes all of Japanese Hiragana/Katakana, Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, IPA Extensions and most of Japanese Kanji, Greek, Cyrillic, Vietnamese with 7 weights (proportional) or 5 weights (monospace). (AUR)
- ttf-ipa-mona, ttf-monapo - Japanese fonts to show 2channel Shift JIS art properly. (AUR)
- ttf-sazanami - Japanese free TrueType font. This is outdated and not maintained any more, but may be defined as a fallback font on several environments.
- ttf-hanazono - A free Japanese kanji font, style Mincho (serif).

##### Korean

- ttf-baekmuk - Collection of Korean TrueType fonts
- ttf-alee - Set of free Hangul TrueType fonts (AUR)
- ttf-unfonts-core - Un fonts (default Baekmuk fonts may be unsatisfactory) (AUR)
- ttf-nanum - Nanum series TrueType fonts (AUR)
- ttf-nanumgothic_coding - Nanum series fixed width TrueType fonts (AUR)

#### Cyrillic

Also see #Monospaced, #Sans-serif and #Serif

- font-arhangai - Mongolian Cyrillic (AUR)
- ttf-pingwi-typography - PingWi Typography (PWT) fonts (AUR)

#### Greek

Almost all Unicode fonts contain the Greek character set (polytonic included). Some additional font packages, which might not contain the complete Unicode set but utilize high quality Greek (and Latin, of course) typefaces are:

- otf-gfs - Selection of OpenType fonts from the Greek Font Society (AUR)
- ttf-mgopen - Professional TrueType fonts from Magenta (AUR)

#### Hebrew

- culmus - Nice collection of free Hebrew fonts (AUR)

#### Indic

- ttf-freebanglafont - Font for Bangla
- ttf-indic-otf - Indic OpenType Fonts collection (containing ttf-freebanglafont)

  (This one contains a "look of disapproval" that might be more to your liking than the bdf-unifont one mentioned elsewhere in this document)

- lohit-fonts - Indic TrueType fonts from Fedora Project (containing Oriya Fonts and more) (AUR)

#### Khmer

- ttf-khmer - Font covering glyphs for Khmer language
- Hanuman (ttf-google-fonts-hg or ttf-google-fonts-git)

#### Sinhala

- ttf-lklug - Sinhala Unicode font (AUR)

#### Tamil

- ttf-tamil - Tamil Unicode fonts (AUR)

#### Tibetan

- ttf-tibetan-machine - Tibetan Machine TTFont

### Math

- font-mathematica - Mathematica fonts by Wolfram Research, Inc.
- ttf-mathtype - MathType fonts (AUR)
- ttf-computer-modern-fonts - (AUR)

### Microsoft fonts

See MS Fonts.

### Apple Mac OS X fonts

- ttf-mac-fonts - Mac OS X TrueType fonts
- ttf-mac - Mac OS X TrueType fonts (This package does not come with the ttf fonts (only the otf fonts), they have to be provided on their own.

### Monospaced

Here are some suggestions. Every user has their own favorite, so experiment to find yours. If you are in a hurry, you read Dan Benjamin's blog post: Top 10 Programming Fonts.

Here is a long list of fonts by Trevor Lowing: http://www.lowing.org/fonts/.

A comparison with images on Slant: What are the best programming fonts?

And a Stack Overflow question with some images: Recommended fonts for programming

#### TrueType

- Agave (ttf-agave)
- Andalé Mono (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Anka/Coder (ttf-anka-coder)
- Anonymous Pro (ttf-anonymous-pro, included in ttf-google-fonts-hg and ttf-google-fonts-git)
- Bitstream Vera Mono (ttf-bitstream-vera)
- Consolas (ttf-vista-fonts) - Windows programming font
- Courier New (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Cousine (ttf-chromeos-fonts or ttf-google-fonts-hg or ttf-google-fonts-git) - Chrome/Chromium OS replacement for Courier New (metric-compatible)
- DejaVu Sans Mono (ttf-dejavu) - Unicode
- Droid Sans Mono (ttf-droid, included in ttf-google-fonts-hg and ttf-google-fonts-git)
- Envy Code R (ttf-envy-code-r)
- FreeMono (ttf-freefont) - Unicode
- Inconsolata (ttf-inconsolata) - Excellent programming font
- Inconsolata-g (ttf-inconsolata-g) - adds some programmer-friendly modifications
- Liberation Mono (ttf-liberation) - Replacement for Courier New, based on Cousine (metric-compatible)
- Lucida Typewriter (included in package jre)
- Monaco (ttf-monaco) - Popular programming font on OSX/Textmate
- Monofur (ttf-monofur)
- Source Code Pro (adobe-source-code-pro-fonts)

#### Bitmap

- Default 8x16
- Dina (dina-font)
- Gohu (gohufont)
- Lime (artwiz-fonts)
- ProFont (profont)
- Proggy Programming Fonts (proggyfonts)
- Proggy opti cyrillic (proggyopticyr-font)
- Tamsyn (tamsyn-font)
- Terminus (terminus-font)
- Unifont (glyphs like (look of disapproval)) (bdf-unifont)

### Sans-serif

- Andika (ttf-andika, included in ttf-sil-fonts)
- Arial (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Arial Black (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Arimo (ttf-chromeos-fonts or ttf-google-fonts-hg or ttf-google-fonts-git) - Chrome/Chromium OS replacement for Arial (metric-compatible)
- Calibri (ttf-vista-fonts)
- Candara (ttf-vista-fonts)
- Constantia (ttf-vista-fonts)
- Corbel (ttf-vista-fonts)
- DejaVu Sans (ttf-dejavu) - Unicode
- Droid Sans (ttf-droid, included in ttf-google-fonts-hg and ttf-google-fonts-git)
- FreeSans (ttf-freefont) - Unicode
- Impact (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Liberation Sans (ttf-liberation) Replacement for Arial, based on Arimo (metric-compatible)
- Linux Biolinum (ttf-linux-libertine)
- Lucida Sans (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Microsoft Sans Serif (ttf-ms-fonts)
- PT Sans (ttf-google-fonts-hg or ttf-google-fonts-git) - 3 major variations: normal, narrow, and caption - Unicode: Latin, Cyrillic
- Source Sans Pro (adobe-source-sans-pro-fonts)
- Tahoma (ttf-tahoma)
- Trebuchet (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Ubuntu-Title (ttf-ubuntu-title)
- Ubuntu Font Family (ttf-ubuntu-font-family)
- Verdana (ttf-ms-fonts)

### Script

- Comic Sans (ttf-ms-fonts)

### Serif

- Cambria (ttf-vista-fonts)
- Charis (ttf-charis, included in ttf-sil-fonts) - Unicode: Latin, Cyrillic
- DejaVu Serif (ttf-dejavu) - Unicode
- Doulos (doulos-sil, included in ttf-sil-fonts) - Unicode: Latin, Cyrillic
- Droid Serif (ttf-droid, included in ttf-google-fonts-hg and ttf-google-fonts-git)
- FreeSerif (ttf-freefont) - Unicode
- Gentium (ttf-gentium, included in ttf-sil-fonts) - Unicode: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Phonetic Alphabet
- Georgia (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Liberation Serif (ttf-liberation) - Replacement for Times New Roman, based on Tinos (metric-compatible)
- Linux Libertine (ttf-linux-libertine) - Unicode: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew
- Times New Roman (ttf-ms-fonts)
- Tinos (ttf-chromeos-fonts or ttf-google-fonts-hg or ttf-google-fonts-git) - Chrome/Chromium OS replacement for Times New Roman (metric-compatible)

### Unsorted

- ttf-google-fonts-git and ttf-google-fonts-hg — a huge collection of free fonts (including ubuntu, inconsolata, droid, etc.) - Note: Your font dialog might get very long as >100 fonts will be added. ttf-google-fonts-hg pulls down the entire Mercurial repository from the upstream Web Fonts project. ttf-google-fonts-git pulls from a much smaller and leaner unofficial repository hosted on GitHub. (AUR)
- ttf-mph-2b-damase — Covers full plane 1 and several scripts
- ttf-symbola — Provides emoji and many many other symbols
- ttf-sil-fonts — Gentium, Charis, Doulos, Andika and Abyssinica from SIL (AUR)
- font-bh-ttf — X.Org Luxi fonts
- ttf-cheapskate — Font collection from dustismo.com
- ttf-isabella — Calligraphic font based on the Isabella Breviary of 1497
- ttf-junicode — Junius font containing almost complete medieval latin script glyphs
- arkpandorafonts ttf-arkpandora — Alternative to Arial and Times New Roman fonts (AUR)
- xorg-fonts-type1 — IBM Courier and Adobe Utopia sets of PostScript fonts

## Fallback font order with X11

Fontconfig automatically chooses a font that matches the current requirement. That is to say, if one is looking at a window containing English and Chinese for example, it will switch to another font for the Chinese text if the default one does not support it.

Fontconfig lets every user configure the order they want via `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/fonts.conf`. If you want a particular Chinese font to be selected after your favorite Serif font, your file would look like this:

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
    <fontconfig>
    <alias>
       <family>serif</family>
       <prefer>
         <family>Your favorite Latin Serif font name</family>
         <family>Your Chinese font name</family>
       </prefer>
     </alias>
    </fontconfig>

You can add a section for Sans-serif and monospace as well. For more informations, have a look at the fontconfig manual.

## Font alias

There are several font aliases which represent other fonts in order that applications may use similar fonts. The most common aliases are: `serif` for a font of the serif type (e.g. DejaVu Serif); `sans-serif` for a font of the sans-serif type (e.g. DejaVu Sans); and `monospace` for a monospaced font (e.g. DejaVu Sans Mono). However, the fonts which these aliases represent may vary and the relationship is often not shown in font management tools, such as those found in KDE and other desktop environments.

To reverse an alias and find which font it is representing, run:

    $ fc-match monospace
    DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"

In this case, `DejaVuSansMono.ttf` is the font represented by the monospace alias.

## Tips

### Install fonts from official repositories

Maybe you want to install all fonts available in official repositories.

All fonts

    # pacman -S $(pacman -Ssq font)

All TrueType fonts

    # pacman -S $(pacman -Ssq ttf)

### List all installed fonts

You can use the following command to list all installed fonts that are available on your system.

    $ fc-list

### Application-specific font cache

Matplotlib (python-matplotlib or python2-matplotlib) uses its own font cache, so after updating fonts, be sure to remove `$HOME/.matplotlib/fontList.cache`, `$HOME/.cache/matplotlib/fontList.cache`, `$HOME/.sage/matplotlib-1.2.1/fontList.cache`, etc. so it will regenerate its cache and find the new fonts [3].

## See Also

- Font configuration
- Infinality-bundle+fonts

Categories:

- Fonts
- Graphics and desktop publishing