I turned on my machine today and found all characters appeared in a different size from those shown up until now. What can the cause possibly be? Maybe one of the hidden files in my home directory got erased?

Try change the font sizes: Menu -> Settings -> Appearance -> Fonts, there you can change the size and the DPI.

Other possible cause is the Display resolution. You can change it: Menu -> Settings -> Display -> (Resolution) change to higher values.

Hope that helps. Good luck. Salud

m.m.

I change the resolution from 1024 x something to 800x 600, that is a lower resolution but now the fonts are quite different from those standing after instalation, So I would have to change the fonts themselves. But, e.g., the tabs titles have change, and the entries in the menues. I don't understand. Unless I erase the hole hidden files from my home directory?

I've always set the Xfce4.x 'experience' back to "default" by logging out and opening a console
and log in as myself and ran
Then a Ctrl+Alt+F[78] and login as your usual self.
Factory Reset Xfce4.


Good Luck.

But isn't it in ~/.config where the problem is?

Hell if I know. Got backups?

A very curious statement. Only you know for sure.

Alternative method:
Create a new user on the system, login as new user.
I'll bet you Two Dozen Jelly Donuts the problem doesn't exist.

It worked. Now, wouldn't it be better to cp instead of mv. With mv I loose the original file(s),

You haven't lost anything. They are simply in a new location.
Fix it.

Alright. Now I wanted to associate a keyboard key with a program. It lets me write the command name but, when asking me to write the shortcut key there is simply no box (or bar) that I can write in! What can this be? Shall I have to reinstall X and the X applications?

U should upgrade to xfce 4.12 ...

I think we all need a lesson in "Hot Keys" vs. "Meta Keys", and Shortcuts vs. accelerators

I reinstalled the X and the Xfce packages to no avail.

Check out hotkeys, or autokey-common.

So what are you experiencing after the reinstalls?

Habitual has given you a very strong solution (I bet the resolution, font sizes, bars, etc issues are gone with a new default face after that). So what do you mean by saying "to not avail", the shortcuts? you can use "ln -s" creating it by terminal, but until we know exactly where you are and what is the problem we can hardly tell what help to give.

m.m.

Well, the problem may be considered solved. I hope this has been clearly stated but, in the opposite case, take one of the LQ pages for instance, that where you are when writting your posts. Not only the font sizes in the text windows but every other string of chars. had changed. For instance, the tabs title. Or the words 'My Profile' in the 'My LQ' column and the string 'My LQ' itself. I looked at the resolution, and this had not changed.

After reinstall of X and Xfce nothing changed but, after having reboot (just restart of X did not worked), things were restored to normality. Of course I had to tailor quite a few things after reinstall. One thing to notice is that frequently the machine turns on without any notice, due to problems with the battery (this is a notebook, sorry for having posted in this subforum). May be some of the files kept by the GUI was damaged, I don't know. Thanks for the feedback.