Font Directories (The GNU Troff Manual)

### 2.4 Font Directories

`groff` enforces few restrictions on how font description files are named. For its family/style mechanism to work (see Font Families), the names of fonts within a family should start with the family name, followed by the style. For example, the Times family uses ‘`T`’ for the family name and ‘`R`’, ‘`B`’, ‘`I`’, and ‘`BI`’ to indicate the styles ‘roman’, ‘bold’, ‘italic’, and ‘bold italic’, respectively. Thus the final font names are ‘`TR`’, ‘`TB`’, ‘`TI`’, and ‘`TBI`’.

Font description files are kept in font directories, which together constitute the font path. The search procedure always appends the directory `dev`name, where name is the name of the output device. Assuming TeX DVI output, and `/foo/bar` as a font directory, the font description files for `grodvi` must be in `/foo/bar/devdvi`. Each directory in the font path is searched in the following order until the desired font description file is found or the list is exhausted.

- Directories specified with GNU `troff`’s or `groff`’s `-f` command-line option. All output drivers (and some preprocessors) support this option as well, because they require information about the glyphs to be rendered in the document.
- Directories listed in the `GROFF_FONT_PATH` environment variable.
- A site-local directory and the main font description directory. The locations corresponding to your installation are listed in section “Environment” of gtroff(1). If not otherwise configured, they are as follows.

      /usr/local/share/groff/site-font
      /usr/local/share/groff/1.23.0/font

  The foregoing assumes that the version of `groff` is 1.23.0, and that the installation prefix was `/usr/local`. It is possible to fine-tune these locations during the source configuration process.