Re: fonts in *terms ...

["David Z. Maze" <dmaze@donut.mit.edu>]

Adam Shand <larry@alaska.net> writes:
AS> i found xfontsel and found a font i like (looks great in the
AS> preview in xfontsel) but when i tell Eterm to use it, the spacing
AS> between the characters is *huge* making the term nearly as wide as
AS> my entire screen.  since the main point of doing this is to get
AS> smaller terms on my screen that are still pretty ... it renders
AS> this pretty much useless.
AS> 
AS> does anyone know how i can do this?
AS> 
AS> the fonts i'm trying to use which looks great under xfontsel is:
AS> 
AS> -adobe-utopia-*-r-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
AS> -bitstream-charter-*-r-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

There's a couple of problems with using these two fonts as terminal
fonts:

-- Both are proportionally spaced, and your terminal program will
   probably fail to deal well.  My guess is that you get
   intercharacter spacing equal to the widest character in the font
   (more likely than not a capital M).

-- You haven't specified bold/medium, which is a generally good
   attribute to keep track of.

-- You haven't specified a size at all, so you're getting whatever
   your X server thinks the default size is.

If I were going to use Charter, I'd use a font descriptor that looked
more like -bitstream-charter-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
(specify weight, point size, and character set).  When I need small
readable terminal windows, though, I generally use one of the small
bitmapped fonts, either 5x7 or 5x8.

-- 
David Maze             dmaze@mit.edu          http://donut.mit.edu/dmaze/
"Hey, Doug, do you mind if I push the Emergency Booth Self-Destruct Button?"
"Oh, sure, Dave, whatever...you _do_ know what that does, right?"