X logical font description (XLFD) is a font standard used by the X Window System. Modern X software typically relies on the newer Fontconfig system instead, but XLFDs are still supported in current X window implementations for compatibility with legacy software.
XLFD is intended to support:
One prominent XLFD convention is to refer to individual fonts including any variations using their unique FontName. It comprises a sequence of fourteen hyphen-prefixed, X-registered fields:
The following sample is for a 75-dpi, 12-point, Charter font:
(which also tells the font source that the client is interested only in characters 65, 70, and 80-90.)