The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators

Posted Jun 4, 2004 21:22 UTC (Fri) by zutman (guest, #5077)
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators

Your editor, who long since found a monospace X font which optimizes both readability and screen space

Must be lucidatypewriter. The best monospace font ever.

to post comments

Font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 21:24 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (12 responses)

"Must be lucidatypewriter. The best monospace font ever."

Nope, it's:

-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1

I've probably been using it for ten years at least. Just tried force-feeding it to gnome-terminal via gconf-editor, but that led to little joy...oh well.

Font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 21:36 UTC (Fri) by zutman (guest, #5077) [Link] (7 responses)

Nope, it's:

-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1

Old habits never die. Here is a sample of lucida typewriter:

xterm -fg '#f0f0c0' +sb -bg '#050510' -fn lucidasanstypewriter-12

Font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 21:39 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (3 responses)

That one's not bad. Interestingly, you can get it in gnome-terminal, but you have to ask for nine-point to get the same size...

Font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 21:48 UTC (Fri) by zutman (guest, #5077) [Link] (2 responses)

Nine points is the one indeed, when you select it the normal
Gnome/KDE way.

That' still something that beriddles me about X font names.
What's that '12' doing in the name? Twelfth version? No, I don't
want to know, I'm grumpy too.

(But the LT makes me lyrical.)

Font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 22:05 UTC (Fri) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

I've never liked serif fonts like courier for technical uses like terminals or source editors. The serifs make things too hard to read (of course one reason could be my screen is 1600x1400 and my font sizes are none too big :-O :-)).

Lucidasans is not too bad, but I can't find a good readable version: 9 is too small, 10 is better but the fonts are vertically large which means I can't fit my 3 rows of xterms anymore, and 12 is far too big all around.

For my terminals I use that old standby, "8x13". Simple, clean, and doesn't take a lot of space.

BTW, the 12 is the pixel size. I'm not sure why the font selector has both a pixel size (12) and a point size (120). Maybe it's easier to pick by pixel size for bitmapped fonts or something.

Font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 22:08 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

That's the pixel size, which is useful for internal purposes, since the program will position the text in pixels (like all of the graphics primitives). Point size is given by multiplying by the resx (or resy) and dividing by 100.

Font

Posted Jun 5, 2004 0:04 UTC (Sat) by maniax (subscriber, #4509) [Link] (1 responses)

Looking at the examples you mention, I can't understand how can you stand them :) Here's what I use almost exclusively (I also use mlterm, if i have to edin something remotely in UTF8):

aterm -bg black -fg grey -cr white -tr +sb -sl 2048 -font -cronyx-fixed-bold-r-normal-*-14-130-75-75-c-70-microsoft-cp1251

Large font

Posted Jun 7, 2004 17:53 UTC (Mon) by sanjoy (subscriber, #5026) [Link]

For many years I've used 10x20 as my default font for everything (xterm/rxvt/emacs/twm menus/...). It's
full name is -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-iso8859-1

The letters are elegant, the lines are thick, and my eyes are not strained. I use
a 800x600 laptop display (TP 560x), which can fit one 80x28 rxvt or a similar-sized emacs.
I bind many function keys so that I can quickly switch
among the various ssh (in rxvt), emacs, lynx (in rxvt), and galeon
windows.

I'm using a Debian testing system (XFree 4.3.0) with sub-pixel
rendering, although I don't know whether 10x20 benefits from it,
but it looks very nice as it is.

-Sanjoy

Font

Posted Jun 6, 2004 13:34 UTC (Sun) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

> > -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1
>
> xterm -fg '#f0f0c0' +sb -bg '#050510' -fn lucidasanstypewriter-12

Man, both of these are quite decent, though I like the sans a little better. What would be ideal is to have the font lucidasanstypewriter but the size to be the same as -fn 7x14 is.

Font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 22:22 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (1 responses)

It is a bit counter-intuitive that the font you mention as the one you like in your xterms is not the font used in your xterm screenshot.

Font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 22:31 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Good point. I had completely cleared out all of my X resources before starting the xterm and taking the screenshot as a way of keeping any of my local changes from creating confusion. Maybe I'll regenerate it real quick.

Font

Posted Jun 10, 2004 21:33 UTC (Thu) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link] (1 responses)

Ok, can anyone tell me why Jon's font, -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1 looks like hell (screenshot of xterm -fn -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1) on my Debian testing system? These are bitmap fonts, so there's no reason they should vary at all, right? I even restarted X with different -dpi resolutions, with no difference.

I've always wondered why many of the bitmap fonts were so ugly, but maybe I'm doing something wrong? Finding a terminal font for X is a torturous process for me. I used the venerable fixed aka 6x13 aka -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1 for many years, but when I got a high-res laptop (133 dpi), that was too small. I don't even care what the font face is called, I just want a nice, clean bitmap font (a well-hinted truetype font would be fine, but the hinting patents seem to rule that out) at a readable pixel size. After much trial and error, I found terminus-16 aka -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1 from the xfonts-terminus package in Debian. But I don't understand why there isn't a font picker that can just show me all 8x16 bitmap fonts available, and why there are so many unusably-ugly bitmap fonts.

Font

Posted Jun 11, 2004 3:14 UTC (Fri) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link]

Argh, I'm an idiot. I didn't have xfonts-75dpi installed.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators

Posted Jun 4, 2004 22:12 UTC (Fri) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (4 responses)

"fixed" is the only face that lets me fit two xterms side by side on a 1024-pixel wide display, with scrollbars. I might like an antialiased version, but nobody seems to be able to match the density and clarity of "fixed". On my desktop at the office, I have nine xterms in one screen, with three pairs overlapping. Try to fit any of the others like that, with all their gewgaws!

fixed font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 22:42 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (3 responses)

"fixed" isn't a single font. It's an alias, and can point to any of
countless "fixed" fonts. Try "xlsfonts |grep fixed". My machine has
"fixed" fonts from at least three different fontmakers.

fixed font

Posted Jun 4, 2004 23:51 UTC (Fri) by da4089 (subscriber, #1195) [Link] (2 responses)

so far back as i remember, "fixed" has been an alias for "6x13".

looking at my fonts.alias, "6x13" is in turn an alias for

-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1

but it's the same font it's been for the last 15+ years: a lightly serifed, clean, readable font which packs a lot of information into limited screen size.

many years ago, i saw something about the response of the human eye to colour, which (as i recall, anyway), said that blue was the hardest to see and a yellow/orange the easiest.

ever since i've used yellow 6x13 text on a blue background, which aside from showing up convergence problems on monitors, i find far easier to use than black on white, etc.

fixed font

Posted Jun 5, 2004 7:08 UTC (Sat) by davidw (guest, #947) [Link]

That's the one!

After spending a few minutes looking for a way to get that in gnome-terminal I gave up and switched back to rxvt. I like to have zillions of terminals open and like something that doesn't waste memory. rxvt does everything I need, and it's fast and light.

fixed font

Posted Jun 10, 2004 21:52 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

That's my favorite font as well, although these days I use "-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1" so that I can get a wider range of funny characters.

I use "green" on "MidnightBlue" for much the same reason that you chose your colors. I also find that my eyes have a hard time picking up dark shapes on an illuminated bright background, so light on dark is much better for me than dark on light. If I used dark-on-light xterms, I'd have to wear sunglasses to avoid eyestrain. For my color xterms, I make color1 "firebrick", color4 "DodgerBlue", and color5 "violet", which I chose to stand out on MidnightBlue.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators

Posted Jun 5, 2004 4:25 UTC (Sat) by bhepple (guest, #2581) [Link]

Maybe it's my setup (I did the "usual" putting 100dpi and :unscaled fonts ahead of 75dpi etc in /etc/X11/fs/config) but lucidasans looks horrible. 6x13 is just a bit too small. 8x13 a bit too wide (and unclear). -cronyx-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-* is appalling.

I'm grumpily happy with a14 - have tried many others and can't part from it.
From /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias:
a14 -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

I use a white on black background, plain old rxvt, in my view the best darn terminal emulator out there! Display is 1600x1280.

-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1 is a close alternative but nowhere near as clear.

[nt] just wish it had Italics...

Posted Jun 7, 2004 19:25 UTC (Mon) by Luyseyal (guest, #15693) [Link]

The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators

Posted Jun 17, 2004 10:28 UTC (Thu) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link]

Personally I like the bitstream vera sans mono font. It's really nice for terminals and programming.