xtermfontconfig

Unable to configure font in XTerm

After a lot of mucking around Xterm, poring through reams of webpages I have thrown in the towel and realized that this isn't something I can figure out on my own.

TrueType vs Bitmap

  1. Is the option xterm*font used to specify only bitmap fonts and is *faceName used only for TrueType fonts?

  2. I'm using the commands xlsfonts and fc-list to find out the Bitmap and TrueType fonts that are installed. Is this correct?

  3. I want to set the XTerm font to Ubuntu Mono. This is the output of fc-list | grep -i ubuntu

    Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=RegularForPowerline
Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=Bold Italic
Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=BoldForPowerline
Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=ItalicForPowerline

and I added XTerm*faceName: Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=RegularForPowerline to my ~/.Xresources and ran xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

xrdb -query all shows that *faceName is set to Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=RegularForPowerline

However, this doesn't work. What am I missing/screwing up here?

EDIT: I finally figured out what's wrong just a couple of days ago after scrounging through multiple sources. Combining everyone's responses here:

Ubuntu Mono is a TrueType font and TrueType fonts require xterm to be compiled with FreeType library support. To check whether xterm has this, use the ldd /path/to/xterm/binary command and see if it says freetype in there. An alternate way is to see if xterm has the -fa option.

If your xterm has FreeType lib support, choose a

  1. Bitmap fonts, by running xfontsel -p and use the exact string it prints upon exit.

  2. TrueType fonts, using fc-list :scalable=true:spacing=mono: family and use the exact string it outputs.

Once you have the font name using one of the above steps, set it via XTerm*faceName: <name of the font>

If you install a new font, and it doesn't show up when you run one of the above commands, rebuild your font cache using fc-cache -frv and try again.

Hope this helps; please let me know in case I've missed anything.

P.S. I used Ubuntu Mono patched font downloaded from here I'm using XTerm*faceName: "Ubuntu Mono derivative Powerline"

Solution

  • Point by point:

    1. yes, the font resource is a standard resource setting for the X Toolkit, which deals only with XLFD (bitmap), while faceName was added long after, in applications such as xterm to provide a way to specify TrueType fonts (actually whatever fontconfig supports, which can include bitmap fonts).
    2. the xlsfonts and fc-list programs are used for the two (XLFD and fontconfig) respectively.
    3. The style looks ... odd. I added the .ttf files from github to my ~/.fonts directory (the zip-file link is the simplest way to download).
    4. I unzipped the download unzip my ~/.fonts directory rather than copying the .ttf files into the top-level directory. fontconfig can deal with subdirectories; it may be sensitive to the actual filenames. For instance, if I had copied the files to the top-level ~/.fonts directory, fc-list would show the full pathname of the font-files (probably not correct).
    5. fc-list shows me Regular where you have RegularForPowerline.

    Here is the output of fc-list, looking for "Power":

    Ubuntu Mono for VimPowerline:style=Bold
Ubuntu Mono for VimPowerline:style=Bold Italic
Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=Bold Italic
Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=Regular
Ubuntu Mono for VimPowerline:style=Italic
Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=Bold
Ubuntu Mono for VimPowerline:style=Regular
Ubuntu Mono for Powerline:style=Italic

    By the way, you could test the fonts directly using the command-line -fa option (quoting the face-name, of course). I did that, and the result looks plausible (comparing regular and bold).