On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 18:58, David C. Rankin <drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Listmates, > > Picking through the font configuration, I have run across a curiosity, why do > the font directories have both a fonts.dir file and a fonts.scale file. The > page: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg_Font_Configuration suggests that > you run mkfontscale and mkfontdir on each of the directories. The related files > fonts.scale and fonts.dir are the same: > > [20:52 supersff:/etc/fonts] # l /usr/local/share/fonts/ > <snip> > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43730 2009-04-28 20:52 fonts.dir > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43730 2009-04-28 20:52 fonts.scale > > [20:52 supersff:/etc/fonts] # diff /usr/local/share/fonts/fonts.dir > /usr/local/share/fonts/fonts.scale > > Why do we need both? > > -- > David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. > Rankin Law Firm, PLLC > 510 Ochiltree Street > Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 > Telephone: (936) 715-9333 > Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 > www.rankinlawfirm.com Scalable fonts do not usually include the X font name, so the file fonts.scale is used to name the scalable fonts in the directory. Alongside it, fonts.dir is a list of all the fonts in the directory - including the scalable ones. If you only have scalable fonts in the directory, then yes, the files will be identical. ~celti
