Worker file manager

1. Configuring fonts in Worker

1.1. General information

The fonts used in Worker can be changed separately for each list view, the buttons and the global font used for anything else. To use different fonts open the configuration window and select the font settings panel.

You can change any of the fonts by clicking at the corresponding button. The dialog offers a set of predefined fonts from which you might select your preferred font.

The example field contains an example of the selected font, you can edit the text field to check whether some characters are shown correctly.

1.2. Selecting a custom font

The font dialog only presents a limited set of fonts to choose from but it is possible to add almost any other font present on the system.

To use a different font you need to enter the X11 font description by clicking on the button at the bottom of the font dialog and enter the font name in the text field. If Worker is compiled with XFT support, you need to enter a XFT font name instead. You can check the "About" dialog to see the font engine in use.

After clicking on Okay, the font will be added at the end of the list if the font name is correct.

1.2.1. X11 fonts

The X11 font description consists of several fields describing different attributes of the font separated by dashes. Since it is not easy to fill out these fields correctly, a tool exists which can be used to interactively select a font.

Start the program

xfontsel
which comes with almost every X11 installation. It let you select any of the 14 fields from a list of possible values. Not every value of a field can be combined with another value of a second field but the problem will grey out unavailable values.

You don't need to fill out every single field, using the asterisk let the system use a reasonable value itself (whatever that means in detail).

When searching for a favorite font you might start at the font family field which is the second one (fmly). After selecting an available option the number of matched fonts will be updated. Some other important fields are:

If you are happy with the configured font you can click on select in the xfontsel window which copies the current font description into the clipboard. You can than paste into the font name field in Worker by clicking on the middle mouse button.

You can also change the sample text if you want to test some other characters. Just start the program with the -sample... argument (check the man page for details). For example, if you want to use a custom string for UTF-8 fonts:

xfontsel -sampleUCS 'my text äèôß'
1.2.1.1. Problems with UTF8 and other encodings

If you use an UTF8 enabled system or in general a non-latin encoding you might experience problems with special characters which are not shown correctly. It can be possible that you need to explicitly tell Worker to use a non-latin font.

The utility xfontsel can help finding the correct font description. When running into problems with encodings the important fields are:

The following table gives an overview of commonly used values:

rgstry value encdng value Description
iso88591ISO Latin 1 font
iso885915ISO Latin 9 font (contains characters like the Euro sign, often used in Europe)
iso106461UTF8 font
koi81Cyrillic font

The font configuration dialog will also tell you how many character sets are missing in the selected font. A non-zero value basically means that some UTF8 characters may not be drawn correctly but it is not necessarily relevant for you. You can however also enter a comma-separated list of multiple font names to fill out the missing character sets with another font.

The most generic solution is to add ",*" to the selected font name by manually editing the name. This will basically select any other default font for the remaining character sets. You may want to at least select a specific font size to match your preferred primary font.

1.2.2. XFT fonts

XFT font names are different from X11 font names but they can be entered as custom font names just like for custom X11 names.

The simplest form is just the font family name and the font size, for example, "Sans-8". More detailed attributes can be set by using a colon for separating different attributes.

Examples:

1.2.2.1. Browsing XFT fonts
Worker does not come with a font browser, but external tools can be used to find the wanted font.

The command line tool "fc-list" can be used to list all installed fonts and their name for use within Worker.

Graphical tools like font-manager can be used to browse and search for fonts. The font name usually can be used as is but the attributes like width or size must be set via attributes as described above.