x-fontperf

x-fontperf is a small utility to measure X11 font loading time.

Version: 1.1
License: Free
Operating System: Linux
Homepage: pfaff.ws
Developed by: Holger Pfaff

x-fontperf is a small utility to measure font rendering/loading time in an x11 environment. Originally intended to see if there is any notable performance difference between a separate font server and local font rendering.

It actually does three different tests:

1) Loading the same font several times
Gives you an average loading time for this particular font. If you use a font already in use in your x-session this should be really quick as this font will be reused and not actually loaded again (cached)
2) Loading the same font in different sizes (incrementing)
Default is from 6 to 144 pixel. Interesting to see how rendering time increases with font size (see option -v)
3) Loading all available fonts
This should give you a good estimate on average fontloading time. Also a good test to stress your system and check if all fonts are loadable (see option -e)

Sample output:

x-fontperf -v
x-fontperf: Copyright (c) Holger Pfaff - http://pfaff.ws
x-fontperf: version 1.1 from 26-Mar-2004
x-fontperf: connected to server: :0.0
x-fontperf: server vendor: Gentoo Linux (XFree86 4.3.0, revision r3)
x-fontperf: vendor release: 40300000
x-fontperf: total of 6406 fonts found
x-fontperf: basefont: -*-helvetica-*-*-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
x-fontperf: loading basefont 100 times ... 6292 usec 62 usec/font
x-fontperf: loading font from pixel size 6 to 144 ... 2977820 usec 21578 usec/font
x-fontperf: loading all 6406 available fonts ... 34965472 usec 5458 usec/font

Usage:

Usage: x-fontperf ...

-display X-display to use

-v Increase verbosity (may falsify results)
-e Show errors during tests

-n Number of iterations for test 1 [100]

-min Minimum pixel size for test 2 [6]
-max Maximum pixel size for test 2 [144]

-foundry Foundry of font [*]
-family Family of font [helvetica]
-weight Weight of font [*]
-slant Slant of font [*]
-setwidth Set width of font [*]
-addstyle Additional style of font [*]
-pixelsize Pixel size of font [12]
-pointsize Point size of font [*]
-resolutionX X resolution of font [*]
-resolutionY Y resolution of font [*]
-spacing Spacing of font [*]
-avgwidth Average width of font [*]
-registry Registry of font [iso8859]
-encoding Encoding of font [1]

Verbosity can be increased in three steps by specifying -v several times. No-
tation -vvv is not supported. Use -v -v -v. Errors opening fonts are not shown
by default. Use -e to see them.

• n specifies the number of iterations for test 1. The default of 100 (shown in

brackets) should be ok for most systems. Increase/decrease values for fast/slow
systems

• min/-max specifies the minimum/maximum pixel size for test 2. Pixel sizes are

incremented by one.

The last block of arguments is for specifying the basefont to use for tests 1
and 2. These follow the standard x11 font naming scheme. Again: defaults are
shown in brackets.

What's New in This Release:

· first public version 1.0