update-fonts-dir - compile fonts.dir files

update-fonts-dir directory ...

update-fonts-dir creates a fonts.dir file in an X font directory by invoking mkfontdir(1x) with the appropriate arguments. It is typically invoked only from the post-installation and post-removal scripts of a package containing fonts for the X Window System, but may be invoked at any time to reconstruct fonts.dir files. For each directory, which is simply the last component of its path (such as 75dpi or misc), update-fonts-dir will generate /usr/share/X11/fonts/directory/fonts.dir from the fonts.scale and font files found within it.

This enables multiple packages to provide names for fonts in the same directory. No font package actually provides the fonts.dir file in the X font directory itself, so there is no danger of overwriting one package's font names with those of another.

For instance, the two packages xfonts-base (real) and xfonts-nifty (hypothetical) may both install fonts into the directory /usr/share/X11/fonts/misc, and update-fonts-dir will ensure that the fonts.dir file in that directory contains information about the font files provided by both packages.

The format of fonts.dir files is described in the mkfontdir(1x) manual page.

An example of how to use update-fonts-dir in package maintainer scripts is provided in the Debian Policy Manual.

-h, --help displays a brief usage message and exits.

update-fonts-dir 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-dir 75dpi is correct, while update-fonts-dir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi and update-fonts-dir /usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi are not.

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 80 is assumed.

Errors

Warnings

0

update-fonts-dir ran successfully.

1

update-fonts-dir experienced a fatal error; see the section on diagnostic messages above.

2

update-fonts-dir was invoked with invalid arguments.

See If you wish to report a bug in update-fonts-dir, please see /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the reportbug(1) command.

update-fonts-dir was written by Branden Robinson.

mkfontdir(1x)