g.mkfontcap(1)

NAME
g.mkfontcap - Generates the font configuration file by scanning various directories for fonts.

KEYWORDS
general

SYNOPSIS
g.mkfontcap
g.mkfontcap --help
g.mkfontcap [-os] [extradirs=string] [--help] [--verbose] [--quiet] [--ui]

  Flags:

-o
    Overwrite font configuration file if already existing

-s
    Write font configuration file to standard output instead of $GISBASE/etc

--help
    Print usage summary

--verbose
    Verbose module output

--quiet
    Quiet module output

--ui
    Force launching GUI dialog

  Parameters:

extradirs=string
    List of extra directories to scan
    Comma-separated list of extra directories to scan for Freetype-compatible fonts as well as the defaults (see documentation)

DESCRIPTION
g.mkfontcap is a utilty to generate a GRASS font configuration file ("fontcap") containing details of the fonts available on the current system. If Freetype is not installed, the font list will be limited to the set of Hershey stroke fonts supplied with GRASS. With Freetype enabled however, the module will recursively scan all files within a predefined hierarchy to find Freetype-compatible scalable fonts. The list of directories scanned is currently:

    /usr/lib/X11/fonts
    /usr/share/X11/fonts
    /usr/share/fonts
    /usr/local/share/fonts
    ${HOME}/Library/Fonts
    /Library/Fonts
    /System/Library/Fonts
    ${WINDIR}/Fonts

These correspond to directories where fonts can be found on some common operating systems. Extra directories to search can easily by added using the extradirs parameter, which accepts a comma-separated list. An extra directory may optionally contain an environment variable at the start of the string, if enclosed in ${xxx} syntax (see examples above).

The module will normally write to the standard fontcap file location, $GISBASE/etc/fontcap. If the environment variable GRASS_FONT_CAP is set, the output will instead be written to the file specified by that variable. This is useful if you don’t have permission to modify $GISBASE/etc/fontcap: in this case you can use e.g.

# use local file version instead of system copy
GRASS_FONT_CAP=$HOME/.gfontcap
export GRASS_FONT_CAP
g.mkfontcap

to create a personal copy and then to make GRASS use that file instead of the system copy.

The output list of fonts is sorted first by type (Stroke fonts first, followed by Freetype) and within each type by the short name of the font.

SEE ALSO
d.font

AUTHOR
Paul Kelly

SOURCE CODE

Available at: g.mkfontcap source code (history)

Accessed: Thursday Jun 04 03:30:16 2026

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© 2003-2023 GRASS Development Team, GRASS GIS 7.8.8 Reference Manual