Re: xterm uses tiny fonts, and I can't resize fonts

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 09:35:16PM -0500, Walter Dnes wrote
> I've installed Fluxbox on a new Acer Aspireone 11.6" netbook.  I'm a
> longtime linux user, but a newbie to Fluxbox.  I've experimented with
> various fonts for X.  I find that regardless of the fonts I install,
> xterm runs a tiny, almost unreadable font.  And what's worse, I *CANNOT*
> resize the font.  xterm totally ignores anything I set by hitting
> {CTRL}{RIGHT-CLICK} inside an xterm.  Any ideas?

  It was a case of "picky, picky, picky".  My desktop machine has a
gazillion fonts installed.  Not so the netbook.  When I try to set the
the xterm font, "cannot load font" error messages show up in the text
console from which it was launched.  Here are the fonts that it tries to
load, and the corresponding menu item...

 nil2 - Unreadable
 5x7  - Tiny
 6x10 - Small
 7x13 - Medium
 9x15 - Large
10x20 - Huge

  I don't happen to have those *EXACT* sizes installed on the netbook,
hence the error messages.  I find that if I launch xterm with the
command "xterm -fn -monotype" it comes up at a nice readable size.  With
the help of xfontsel, I can find what font families and sizes I do have
and launch xterm with those fonts.  A bit of RTFM turned up some info
about how to control the expected font for each of the menu entries via
resource files...

Default (fontdefault) - *VT100.font resource.
Unreadable (font1) - *VT100.font1 resource.
Tiny (font2) - *VT100.font2 resource.
Small (font3) - *VT100.font3 resource.
Medium (font4) - *VT100.font4 resource.
Large (font5) - *VT100.font5 resource.
Huge (font6) - *VT100.font6 resource.

  So it should be a one-time job to enter the proper values in a
resource file and xterm will be happy.

-- 
Walter Dnes <[email protected]>

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