* the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number of times; each time specifies the font for one character set. CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.

Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING. You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.

For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the following resource, Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24 the font for ASCII is generated as below: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1 Here is the substitution rule: Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-. (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)

The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call that function explicitly to create a fontset.

With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle fontsets.