Changing fonts in rxvt and mc
 

Hello, I'm trying to change the fonts in my terminal (rxvt) and file manager (Midnight Commander). I may just want to change the font size. I'm using fluxbox, but I don't think it's a setting that fluxbox controls. Is it something I change in .Xdefaults (under user directory)? I tried someone else's .Xdefaults file, which had listed

rxvt*font: ter-128b

but that is too small.

Thanks.

mc doesn't have fonts; that's dependent on the terminal emulator. And some have their own config files but xterm (and rxvt, I believe), do indeed use .Xdefaults or .Xresources or whatever script you have xrdb read. That looks like an alias for a terminus font but I'm not sure/can't remember what the 128 is. In a full XLFD, you'd have:

-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso8859-1
-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--24-240-72-72-c-120-iso8859-1

and you'd want to change the pixel size/point size (20-200/24-240). So if it's too small, just try one bigger, run 'xrdb -merge FILE', and launch rxvt again. You can use 'xlsfonts' (or xfontsel) to see what options you have for font choices.

Just noticed this was your first post - welcome to LQ. :)

Yes, it's an alias for Terminus.

I did not have them installed correctly -- well, I may not still. I got them from here:

http://www.is-vn.bg/hamster/jimmy-en.html

It has a section that says:

I did this and they're showing up in xlsfonts and xfontsel now. However I still don't know how to get rxvt and mc displaying them. I edit a .Xdefaults file in my /home/<usr> directory? or is it the .Xdefaults in /home/?

Trying to change

in the .Xdefaults did not seem to work -- I think it registers that as a non-font and supplies something else.

- Matthew

p.s. Yes, second post here. Thanks for the help!

You need to start rxvt with the font in the command line:

xrvt -fn xxxx

xfontsel will allow you to pick a font.

xrvt -h for other settings.

"rxvt -fn <XLFD>" works, but I'm looking for permanent settings. (It returns to the old font after closing the window).

You can do as dive says to see if you can get it working at all and, if it does, even make an alias to make the font flag automatic, but xrdb is the usual course.

It would probably be /home/$USER, yes, though it can be any file. I don't use a display manager, so start X with 'startx', which means my ~/.xinitrc gets read and, in that file, I have
So that's the file it is for me (the uppercase bugged me). I think the default is to read a system-wide file and then ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xresources

Change to what? What was the result? Specifying things like this will help you get help. Depending on what your fonts.alias in your terminus directory says, you may need to specify different things but, as long as X is aware of the fonts the XLFD (the full weird string) should always work. If it said something like 'unable to find font foo, defaulting to "fixed"', then, yeah, it's not finding the font, but if you feed in what xlsfonts spits out, that shouldn't happen.

As I say, you will need to run 'xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults' to get the config changes to rxvt to take effect. You didn't specify whether you did that.

Welcome. :)

Dunno how I missed your last post. So that's good. It's not a font issue but purely an .Xdefaults or xrdb issue. One other thing to try is 'xprop WM_CLASS' on an rxvt window to make sure its class is 'rxvt', but it certainly is. So doing something like

(only with 'rxvt' or 'Rxvt' or whatever, and your preferred font) should work.

Ah ha! I solved it.

Okay this is what you do.

You must include the full XLFD in the .Xdefaults of your user directory. Or, if you include an alias, I must be typing it wrong, so I have used the XLFD instead.

I used -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso8859-1.

So in /home/<user>/.Xdefaults I have:

and now Midnight Commander looks like this on 1280x960 resolution in Fluxbox:

http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/9...erminusbn1.png


Thanks for the help everyone!

Sorry digiot -- I must have been in the midst of posting that while you were responding. By the way, it seems to have worked without using 'xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults'.

If you're in a hurry or just lazy, just press or - to increase/decrease font size

You can also try running xlsfonts to see how your font would look like.

rxvt fonts
 

Been playing with this for a while and this one worked beautifully for me:

rxvt -fn -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-15-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Nice and readable. Has all the line drawing chars for mc also.