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

The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators

Posted Jun 4, 2004 22:12 UTC (Fri) by ncm (guest, #165)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators by zutman
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to terminal emulators

"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!

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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.