The FontDialog in Tycho is a top-level window within which you can select a font. You will usually get access to it through the preferences manager.
The window contains three option menus which you can use to set
the font family, size, and style. The Screen
family is a
pseudo-family that maps to some common X fonts such as 8x13
and
9x15
.
There is a display of text in the selected font, and, for the
hackers, the name of the actual font selected. When you make a
change to the selected font, the displayed text changes to that font.
The font dialog (and the class that is doing the real work
behind the scenes, the font
manager, hide the arcane font specification
that is used by the window system from the user. As part of this,
the font manager will always choose a valid font, regardless of the
specification you give it. For example, if you try and select a
Screen
font in italics, the font manager will display a Courier
font
since there is no italic Screen
font.