Using the Panel

Documentation / Contents - Font Scheme

• Overview of the Font Scheme Panel
  • Fonts and Colours Are Separate
  • What Sets It Apart
• The Nine Roles
  • The House Voice
  • The Small and Tiny Sizes
  • Partial Schemes
• Using the Panel
  • The Scheme List
  • The Role Rows
  • Changing One Role
  • The Buttons
    • Apply
    • Save and Save As
    • Defaults and Revert
    • Close
  • Following the Desktop
• Font Descriptors
  • The Leading Dash Is the Whole Rule
  • When the Resolved Font Differs
  • Reading the Nine Samples
• Point Size, DPI, and Why Layout Holds
  • Where DPI Comes From
  • The Panel Fits Itself Before It Draws
  • Changing the Desktop DPI
  • Bitmap Fonts and the Core Path
  • Looking at What a Canonical Application Will Get
• Where Font Schemes Live
  • The Search Path
  • The File
  • Two Names
  • The Built-in Defaults
• Command Line and Keys
  • Command Line
  • Keys
    • On the Main Panel
    • In the Font Dialog
• Fonts, Colours, and the Rest of the Desktop
  • Colour Schemes
  • Monitor Settings and DPI
  • The Scheme Daemon

Other cards

• Copyright Information

Using the Panel

The window has no menu bar. Everything is done with the scheme list on the left, the nine role rows on the right, and the button row along the bottom.

The Scheme List

Under the label "Font Schemes" is a list of every font scheme installed on the machine, sorted by name. A scheme you wrote yourself is drawn in the oblique face, the same tell the colour scheme browser uses.

Clicking a scheme LOADS it. There is no separate Open step. The arrow keys move the selection, which means arrowing down the list loads each scheme in turn; that is a fast way to compare them.

The schemes shipped with Blueprint are broadsheet, classic-bitmap, default, heros, liberation and noto. The name in the list is the file name without its .cyfont tail, which is also the name Apply and the command line use.

The Role Rows

Under the label "Roles -- each sample is drawn in its own face" are nine rows, one per role, in the order given in The Nine Roles.

Each row has three parts:

• The role name, on the left.
• A sunken sample well. The top line is a specimen painted in that role's own resolved face. The bottom line, dimmed, is the descriptor that actually resolved.
• A "Change..." button on the right.

A leading tilde on the caption means the resolved descriptor is not the string the scheme asked for. See Font Descriptors.

When a scheme loads, the status line says how it went, for example:

Loaded heros -- every role resolved as asked
Loaded noto -- 2 of 9 roles resolved to a different face (~)

Changing One Role

Click "Change..." on a row. A dialog opens titled "Select Font --" followed by that role's name, seated on the role's current face. It holds:

Family:          every family, server and outline
Style:           Book, Bold, Oblique, Bold Oblique
Size (points):   6 through 72
Size:            a field, if the size you want is not on the list
Source:          Outline (Xft) or Server (XLFD)
Font name:       the composed descriptor, editable
Sample           a preview of the result

A style a family does not actually ship is greyed out rather than offered and substituted behind your back. For a bitmap face, only the sizes that really exist are sensitive, and a real size that is not on the standard ladder is spliced into it.

OK applies the choice to that role and writes a line like this to the status line:

BoldLabelFont = TeX Gyre Heros-10:bold   (outline font, Xft path)

There is no Apply button in the dialog. See Command Line and Keys for its keyboard bindings, which are the only rich set in this panel.

The Buttons

Apply       make this the desktop's font scheme, now
Save        write the scheme to your own directory
Save As...  write it under a new name
Revert      go back to the table as it was when loaded or last saved
Defaults    load the built-in defaults
Close       quit
Help        open this book

Save and Revert are insensitive until you have changed something. The rest are always available.

Apply

Apply spools the current table to your own font-scheme directory and then asks the running scheme daemon to make it the desktop's font scheme. If nothing was loaded, it saves under the name "edited" first.

Applied heros desktop-wide

If no daemon is running, the work is still saved and the status line says so:

Saved heros -- no cyschemed running, nothing applied

Save and Save As

Save writes to your own directory, always. A shipped scheme is never rewritten in place; saving a shipped scheme under its own name puts your copy in your directory, where it shadows the shipped one.

Save As opens a prompt titled "Save Font Scheme As" with the line "Save the font scheme as:". Slashes, backslashes and spaces in the name you type each become a dash, and control characters are dropped.

Defaults and Revert

Defaults loads the nine built-in descriptors and marks the table changed. It does not save anything. Revert undoes your edits back to the table as it stood when you loaded or last saved it.

Close

Close quits at once. It does not ask about unsaved edits. Press Save first.

Only one Font Scheme panel runs per display screen. Launching it again replaces the running one, which exits immediately.

Following the Desktop

The panel watches the desktop's font scheme several times a second. If somebody else changes it, and you have no unsaved edits, this panel adopts the change and re-typesets the nine rows:

Following the desktop font scheme Heros (serial 7)

If you DO have unsaved edits, your work is not stomped. The panel tells you what happened and leaves the decision to you:

Desktop font scheme changed to Heros -- your edits are unsaved, Revert to follow it

Next

• Font Descriptors
• Point Size, DPI, and Why Layout Holds
• Where Font Schemes Live