Fontconfig

Fontconfig (or fontconfig) is a free softwareprogram library designed to provide configuration, enumeration and substitution of fonts to other programs. Fontconfig was originally written and maintained by Keith Packard, and is currently maintained by Behdad Esfahbod.

Fontconfig is typically used on graphical Linux (and other Unix-like) desktops, where it remains an important part of handling fonts. However, it is also sometimes used on other platforms, notably including Windows versions of software that use Pango for laying out and rendering text, such as GIMP.

End-users can use fontconfig, directly or indirectly, to customize and configure fonts on the system.

Applications can use fontconfig in two ways:

To perform font matching, fontconfig stores typesetting information about all of the installed fonts, including the name of the font family, style, weight, DPI, and Unicode coverage. This information is also used to perform font substitution.

Fontconfig uses XML format for its configuration files. The Document Type Definition (DTD) for fontconfig files is normally located at /etc/fonts/fonts.dtd.

The master configuration file - usually /etc/fonts/fonts.conf - references a few other configuration locations which may or may not exist:

A simple example of a configuration file:

Fontconfig ships with eight command line utilities to manage and query fonts and the font configuration of the system: