trouble changing the menubar font.

[Jistan Idiot]

So my next problem is that I'm trying to change the font used in the menu bar. Currently it is using some ugly fixed or courier new font. I'll be happy if I can change it to Arial or something.

I first tried looking under Options->Menubars but didn't see anything useful.

Next I came across the FAQ on xemacs.org (xemacs-faq_5.html#SEC187)

So I tried adding *fontList: Arial to custom.el but that exploded with another function definition is void and still the ugly font for the menubar.

I then came across this thread:
http://list-archive.xemacs.org/pipermail/xemacs-beta/2010-July/019729.html
which suggested playing with ~/.Xresources

So I added
XEmacs*menubar*fcFontName: Arial-10
to ~/.Xresources and did an xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

Start up xemacs and still the ugly font in the menubar.

I figure before I spend countless more hours searching, I should ask the experts.

I'm using Xemacs 21.4.22 on Kubuntu 11.10.

Thanks in advance.

[Mike Kupfer]

Jistan Idiot <jista...@gmail.com> writes:

> So I added
> XEmacs*menubar*fcFontName: Arial-10
> to ~/.Xresources and did an xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

The syntax "Arial-10" is for Xft fonts (Freetype), which I doubt your
21.4.22 XEmacs supports. You'll need to use an old-style X font
specification, e.g.,

XEmacs*menubar*font:-*-arial-*-*-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*

(Though that's 12 point, not 10. I don't see 10-point Arial on my
Ubuntu 11.10 system.)

mike

[Jistan Idiot]

Thanks that worked if I used lower case xemacs*menubar*font. How do you know how many -*- to put in the font name? What if I want to use another font other than Arial?

Thanks again.

-J

[Mike Kupfer]

Jistan Idiot <jista...@gmail.com> writes:

> Thanks that worked if I used lower case xemacs*menubar*font. How do
> you know how many -*- to put in the font name? What if I want to
> use another font other than Arial?

There are a couple ways you can attack this.

One is to pick through the output from xlsfonts. The fields are
separated by hyphens, and you can replace don't-care fields with "*".

The other is to run xfontsel. That will bring up a window that lets
you play with the different fields in the specifier and see what the
resulting text will looks like. So if you want something other than
Arial, you could select a different family from the "fmly" menu. Each
choice constrains the other fields. So start with whatever's most
important to you (family, perhaps), then pick the next thing (ptSz,
perhaps, which is the point size times 10), etc. When you've got a
specifier you like, you can click the "select" button, then
middle-click in your XEmacs window.

mike