This script will temporarily set a alternative
GTK_FONT while launching a COMMAND. I like to use
a very specific font that doesn't work if
displayed in other sizes than 12 or if it is
decorated with bold or italics as my GTK
system font. It is usually not a problem since it
is possible to set up rules for fonts in
fontconfig. But Chromium based
applications (including f.i. electron), ignores
the fontconfig settings. This combined with the
trend among webdevs to use system-ui as the font
on webpages makes the web unreadable.
It is possible to start such applications with alternative gtk settings files. But it is a bit hacky, and you need to keep track of gtk2,gtk3,gtk4 settings for it to work reliably.
I use Xfce and the settingsdaemon: xfsettingsd, which is a better way to edit the GTK settings (if you for instance, change the GTK_THEME or font it will update on the fly in both GTK2, GTK3, GTK4). It comes with a command line utility xfconf-query, but it is quite complicated to use and remember its syntax.
So this script simply uses xfconf-query to get
the current gtk font, store it in a variable,
then use xfconf-query to change the font to the
content of the environment
variable GTK_ALT_FONT, (defaults to "Noto Sans 12")
sleep 3 seconds (override with --sleep) in the background
while launching a COMMAND , and then revert to the original
font.
Below are two screenshots of this repo opened in VSCode:
code .
gtk-alt-font -- code .
Build dependencies:
- GNUmake
- gawk
- bash
Runtime dependencies:
- xfconf-query
- xfsettingsd (*needs to be running in the background)
(configure the installation in config.mak, if needed)
$ git clone https://github.com/budRich/gtk-alt-font.git
$ cd gtk-alt-font
$ make
# make install
$ gtk-alt-font -h
usage: gtk-alt-font [OPTIONS] -- COMMAND
-f, --font FONT | override GTK_ALT_FONT
-h, --help | print help and exit
-t, --sleep SECONDS | SECONDS before reverting back the font
--verbose | detailed output to STDERR
-v, --version | print version info and exit