The X font server (xfs) provides a standard mechanism for an
X server to communicate with a
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
renderer, frequently one running on a remote machine. It usually runs on
TCP
TCP may refer to:
Science and technology
* Transformer coupled plasma
* Tool Center Point, see Robot end effector
Computing
* Transmission Control Protocol, a fundamental Internet standard
* Telephony control protocol, a Bluetooth communication s ...
port 7100.
Current status
The use of server-side fonts is currently considered deprecated in favour of client-side fonts.
[Matthieu Herrb and Matthias Hopf]
New Evolutions in the X Window System
Such fonts are rendered by the client, not by the server, with the support of the
Xft2 or
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
libraries and the
XRender
The X Rendering Extension (Render or XRender) is an extension to the X11 core protocol to implement image compositing in the X server, to allow an efficient display of transparent images.
History
It was written by Keith Packard in 2000 an ...
extension.
For the few cases in which server-side fonts are still needed, the new servers have their own integrated font renderer, so that no external one is needed. Server-side fonts can now be configured in the X server configuration files. For example, will set the server-side fonts for
Xorg
X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation.
Implementations of the client-side X Window System protocol exist in the form of ''X11 libraries'', which serve a ...
.
No specification on client-side fonts is given in the core protocol.
Future
As of October 2006, the manpage for xfs on Debian states that:
:FUTURE DIRECTIONS
::Significant further development of xfs is unlikely. One of the original motivations behind xfs was the single-threaded nature of the X server — a user’s X session could seem to "freeze up" while the X server took a moment to rasterize a font. This problem with the X server (which remains single-threaded in all popular implementations to this day) has been mitigated on two fronts: machines have gotten much faster, and client-side font rendering (particularly via the Xft library) has become the norm in contemporary software.
Deployment issues
So the choice between local filesystem font access and xfs-based font access is purely a local deployment choice. It does not make much sense in a single computer scenario.
See also
*
X Window System core protocol
The X Window System core protocolRobert W. Scheifler and James Gettys: ''X Window System: Core and extension protocols, X version 11, releases 6 and 6.1'', Digital Press 1996, RFC 1013Grant EdwardsAn Introduction to X11 User Interfaces/ref> is the ...
*
X logical font description
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 ...
References
{{Reflist
X Window System
Servers (computing)