Modifying gtk2 fonts <SOLVED>

[Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>]

Hi all,

I use dwm, a window manager that gives you no help with fonts: You need
to modify fonts yourself.

Thunar and xchat had the tiniest fonts you can imagine. The ldd command
revealed both are gtk2, so I followed tens of suggestions listed on
the web (many contradictory, few explicit),  to change gtk2 fonts with
files like ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.gtkrc.mine, but nothing change.

Finally I ran lxappearance changed the fonts that way, and Thunar and
Xchat now had readable fonts. But of course, I use dwm for low memory
usage, so I don't want to be running lxappearance every time I start X.

And I don't have to. lxappearance does its magic by writing the
*correct* stuff to ~/.gtkrc-2.0. From then on, that file remains, boot
after boot, until something or somebody deliberately changes it. No
further lxappearance runs needed.

So, if anybody else has been tearing out their hair trying to follow
all the contradictory Web suggestions for changing fonts on gtk2 apps,
now you can save what hair you have left.

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance