update-fonts-alias (8)
Leading comments
$Id: update-fonts-alias.8 189 2005-06-11 00:04:27Z branden $ Copyright 1999, 2002, 2004 Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org>. This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2. This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Pub...
NAME
update-fonts-alias - compile fonts.alias filesSYNOPSIS
update-fonts-alias [OPTION] directory ...DESCRIPTION
update-fonts-alias assembles a fonts.alias file in an X font directory using one or more alias files found in a subdirectory of /etc/X11/fonts/. It is typically invoked only from the post-installation and post-removal scripts of a package containing X Window System fonts that provide aliases for their XLFD names, but may be invoked at any time to reconstruct fonts.alias files. For each directory, which is simply the last component of its path (such as oq75dpicq or oqmisccq), update-fonts-alias will assemble either /usr/lib/X11/fonts/directory/fonts.alias or /usr/share/fonts/X11/directory/fonts.alias from the files found in /etc/X11/fonts/directory/package.alias.This enables multiple packages to provide aliases for fonts in the same directory. No font package actually provides the fonts.alias file in the X font directory itself, so there is no danger of overwriting one package's aliases with those of another.
For instance, the two packages oqxfonts-basecq and oqxfonts-base-transcodedcq may both install fonts into the directory /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc. They each place their fonts.alias files in /etc/X11/fonts/misc/xfonts-base.alias and /etc/X11/fonts/misc/xfonts-base-transcoded.alias (respectively). update-fonts-alias concatenates these two files (as well as any others that match /etc/X11/fonts/misc/*.alias) into /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias.
The format of fonts.alias files is described in the mkfontdir(1x) manual page.
An example of how to use update-fonts-alias in package maintainer scripts is provided in the Debian Policy Manual.
OPTIONS
-h, --help displays a brief usage message and exits.OPERANDS
update-fonts-alias takes one or more X font directory names to operate on as operands. Only the final path component of the directory name should be specified; e.g.,- update-fonts-alias 75dpi
ENVIRONMENT
- COLUMNS
- indicates the width of the terminal device in character cells. This value is used for formatting diagnostic messages. If not set, the terminal is queried using stty(1) to determine its width. If that fails, a value of oq80cq is assumed.
DIAGNOSTICS
Errors
- usage error: one or more font directories must be provided
- update-fonts-alias was invoked without operands. Supply one or more X font directory names to operate on.
- usage error: unrecognized option
- update-fonts-alias was invoked with an unrecognized option argument. Use only the options documented in lqOPTIONSrq, above.
- fatal error: path to X font directory must be used
- A directory name was supplied that was not an X font directory name. Supply X font directory names only.
Warnings
- warning: absolute path directory was provided
- Usage of absolute paths is deprecated. Use only the final component of the X font directory name for directory.
- warning: directory does not exist or is not a directory
- The supplied directory was invalid. update-fonts-alias skipped it.
EXIT STATUS
- 0
- update-fonts-alias ran successfully.
- 1
- update-fonts-alias experienced a fatal error; see the section on diagnostic messages above.
- 2
- update-fonts-alias was invoked with invalid arguments.