2.4 Font Directories

Basically, there is no restriction how font files for groff are named and how long font names are; however, to make the font family mechanism work (see Font Families), fonts within a family should start with the family name, followed by the shape. For example, the Times family uses ‘T’ for the family name and ‘R’, ‘B’, ‘I’, and ‘BI’ to indicate the shapes ‘roman’, ‘bold’, ‘italic’, and ‘bold italic’, respectively. Thus the final font names are ‘TR’, ‘TB’, ‘TI’, and ‘TBI’.

All font files are kept in the font directories, which constitute the font path. The file search functions always append the directory devname, where name is the name of the output device. Assuming, say, DVI output, and /foo/bar as a font directory, the font files for grodvi must be in /foo/bar/devdvi.

The elements of the search path for font files are (in that order):

• The directories specified with gtroff’s or groff’s -F command line option. All device drivers and some preprocessors also have this option.
• The directories given in the GROFF_FONT_PATH environment variable.
• A site-specific directory and the main font directory; the default locations are

  /usr/local/share/groff/site-font
  /usr/local/share/groff/1.22.3/font
  

  assuming that the version of groff is 1.22.3, and the installation prefix was /usr/local. It is possible to fine-tune those directories during the installation process.