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23

XTerm font is very small. How can I set it larger?

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this also would be helpful - avoid bold chars on it unix.stackexchange.com/questions/31999/… – Sergio Abreu Jan 15 '17 at 19:10
    
This is exhaustive, and gives a bit of insight to the xterm program: invisible-island.net/xterm/manpage/xterm.html – SDsolar Aug 1 '17 at 18:05
up vote 72 down vote accepted

If you don't already have one, create a file in your home directory named .Xresources to store your preferences for various X programs. Append a line to the file such as

xterm*font:     *-fixed-*-*-*-18-*

This informs xterm to use the 'fixed' font at size 18.

From here, you can either restart X or run xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources in a terminal to incorporate the changes you've made. All new xterms should now have the font change.

If you run man xterm and go down to the RESOURCES section, you can find a wealth of additional, configurable xterm options.

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Thanks noffle it worked....but how can i set the dimensions of the xterm windows to a fixed ones? – Sudo Jul 10 '12 at 9:32
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The X resource for dimensions is geometry. So something like the following in your .Xresources would work: xterm*geometry: 110x50. – noffle Jul 10 '12 at 14:07
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You're welcome. Consider creating a separate question in the future for the geometry issue rather than tacking it into a comment: it makes it harder for others to find. – noffle Jul 10 '12 at 17:06
    
Thanks for mentioning 'xrdb -merge' part, that did the trick! – HidekiAI May 10 '16 at 12:16
    
Have this same question, both font-size and resize issue, thanks @noffle – Onix Feb 25 '17 at 20:37
up vote 33 down vote

You can also Ctrl-Right mouse click for temporary change of font size

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That is totally cool! Thanks much. – SDsolar Aug 1 '17 at 18:01
    
How do you find out what font size and face you have actually selected with this method, so you can make it the default in ~/.Xresources ? – Geeb Nov 13 '17 at 18:00
up vote 32 down vote

Use -fa and -fs parameters:

xterm -fa 'Monospace' -fs 14
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1  
This does not "change the default font size" (as requested)! – Dirk Aug 23 '16 at 15:58
    
That works at the command line but not from the GUI. – SDsolar Aug 1 '17 at 17:52
up vote 4 down vote

From messing with /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm file and man page for Xterm I found two methods.

Method 1: A simpler method but not permanent: hold Ctrl key and right click button. This should bring up a menu for VT fonts, which stays on only as long as you hold right click key. You should see 7 choices, the largest being huge, which is what I'm using because my vision isn't exactly good.

Source: xterm(1) man page, part VT Fonts, which states "The fontMenu pops up when when the “control” key and pointer button three are pressed in a window."

Method 2: Permanent. Look through /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm, find what sizes lines such as *VT100.font1: , choose one, and write somewhere xterm*font: 10x20 (10x20 , again this is my choice for reasons I already stated).

About my system: I'm running Ubuntu 13.10

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Didn't notice that dolzenko has already posted method 1 before. Oh, well. – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Aug 6 '14 at 8:37
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And method 2, changing system files, is not recommended. You (and all users on your system) may loose your modifications any time when an update overwrites that file. – Dirk Aug 23 '16 at 15:59
up vote 3 down vote

you can also simply test them with :

xterm -fn "--clean--*---*---*---*-*"

after sel with xfontsel

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up vote 0 down vote

One more option, add this to your ~/.Xresources to make hotkeys for changing the font size:

XTerm.vt100.translations: #override \n\
  Ctrl <Key> minus: smaller-vt-font() \n\
  Ctrl <Key> plus: larger-vt-font()

If you use uxterm, be sure to use UXTerm.vt100.translations instead.

Then you can use ctrl++ to increase font size or ctrl+- to decrease the size, just like you can with ctrl+right-click and selecting one of the other font size options.

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