(Modified 2005 Jan 16)
Font selection
may be specific to XFCE
Why bother?
I don't remember exactly what the default font settings were when I first installed XFCE, but the font was only marginally readable. You have a tiny bit of control, using CTRL-RightClick, but this wasn't satisfactory.
I wanted more control over the font, and font-selection required the command xfontsel. When you start this up (from a terminal window), you have columns of font characteristics in one row, and your current font selection in the row below that. Initially, they'll be all asterisks, meaning the default selection. In the top right, there'll be a field telling you how many fonts satisfy your constraints.
When you've selected a font characteristic from a pull-down menu, you'll probably see some sample text in the main body of the xfontsel window. For example, under "fmly", pick "courier". (I ultimately picked Courier, as it is a font where each character takes up the same width. This is useful when you're trying to line up text.) You can go through each column and experiment with font choices.
Here is a list of the columns, what I chose, and what they mean. I don't remember this off the top of my head; I checked with The Linux Documentation Project. I haven't frequented that website very often; maybe it'd be better at explaining what I'm trying to explain. Oh well.
fndry -- * -- foundry, i.e., organization that produced the font
fmly -- courier -- family
wght -- medium -- weight
slant -- r -- slant
sWdth -- * -- width
adstyl -- * -- additional style
pxlsz -- 14 -- pixel size
ptSz -- * -- point size
resx -- * -- horizontal resolution
resy -- 100 -- verticla resolution
spc -- * -- spacing
avgWdth -- * -- average width
rgstry -- iso8859 -- registry
encdng -- * -- nationality encoding
Once you're satisfied with your selection, you'll need to apply it. Clicking on the "select" button will not apply your selection, as you might think. Instead, what the "select" button does is that, when you paste text, your font characteristics is what will be pasted. To apply your font selection, you have to find where the terminal-window is called, and specificy the font there.
In XFCE, you right click on the terminal icon and select properties. The entry in the "Command" field is what you would type if you wanted to start a terminal window from another terminal window. What you need to do is add the flag -fn, a space, and then paste your font selection.
In my case, instead of
xterm
I'll have replaced it with
xterm -fn -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-14-*-*-100-*-*-iso8859-*
Actually, for reasons I don't remember, I'm using xfterm4 instead ofxterm.
Lastly, note that some programs will specify their own font.
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