Re: Questions on xlfd and other fonts: proper usage with -draw?

On Mon, 24 Dec 2018, Tom Browder wrote:
>
> Bob, thank you so much for the very detailed help--just what I was
> looking for.  It would be very useful to have some of that info on the
> GM site. I looked pretty carefully on the extensive documentation and
> found under 'convert' options:
>
>  -list <type>
>  the type of list
>
> so I didn't connect that to 'type' as in fonts, etc. (I'll be 75 New

As it happens '-list fonts' works as well.

> Year's Eve and my mind isn't as sharp as it used to be!).  Perhaps it
> would be helpful to have something like this in place of 'the type of
> list':
>
>  the type of list (font, fonts, type, [list all possible entries]

That is a good idea.

>> I am not sure what an 'xlfd' font is.  The font is either obtained
>> from an X11 server (in which case old-style X11 naming must be used)
>
> I was referring to the X logical font description name which I got
> from one of your examples.

Unfortunately, there is not currently an algorithm to pick the best 
fixed-size X11 font based on the family specification.  Fixed-size X11 
fonts are not popular any more and are likely to eventually stop being 
supported in common X11 installations.

Eventually we will support Fontlib, which is the normal way to 
find/choose fonts on Unix/Linux type systems.

> I looked at your website and see that you worked with the late Richard
> Williams. I have two of his books and have always admired him since I
> entered the Unix world in 1987. I was very saddened to hear of his
> too-early demise and was glad to see his work saved for future
> generations.

You mean Richard W Stevens.  Richard was a great person and has left 
behind a lasting legacy.  Printed books are going out of style so his 
books are certain to be the pinnacle of the art when it comes to Unix 
programming and protocols.

> I was glad to see you are a Perlish person: I think you would enjoy
> Larry's new Perl 6 (https://perl6.org)!

I used to be a Perlish person.  I have also been a TCLish person in 
the past.  Most recently I mostly write scripts in Python and have 
forgotten the other syntaxes.  I have to refer to existing code or a 
book to write Perl or TCL now.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
[email protected], http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
Public Key,     http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/public-key.txt