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raldi
Asked: 2009-08-17 07:33:29 +0800 CST

How do I install a font in Linux so that it's usable by xterm?

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I came across a question today asking for good Linux xterm fonts, and an answer suggests one called Terminus. I've been looking for a new terminal font for a while now, so I downloaded it (BTW, I'm running Ubuntu Intrepid) and read the README:

1.1. Quick installation.
The commands:
  $ ./configure [--prefix=PREFIX]
  $ make
  # make install
compile and install the Linux console and X11 Window System fonts, and
  # make fontdir
updates fonts.dir for X11 (if you don't know what fonts.dir is, execute the
command).

1.2. Legend.    
The file names are structured as follows: ter-u<SIZE><STYLE>.bdf    
where <SIZE> is 12, 14, 16, 20, 24, 28 or 32, and <STYLE> is n for normal
(all sizes), b for bold (all sizes except 6x12) and v for EGA/VGA bold (8x14
and 8x16 only, makes use of the eight character matrix column).

So I ran:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo make fontdir

...and I restarted X11 just to be sure, and the new font was nowhere to be found:

$ xterm -font ter-u14n
xterm:  unable to open font "ter-u14n", trying "fixed"....

Sigh. Back to the README. Later in this file, I saw:

4. X11 Window System.
4.1. Installation.

$ ./configure [--prefix=PREFIX | --x11dir=DIRECTORY]
$ make pcf
# make install-pcf

Well, I know that "xterm -font 8x16" works, so I ran "locate 8x16" and saw that this font seemed to live in /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc, so that seemed like a good --x11dir to use. So I ran:

$ ./configure --x11dir=/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc
$ make pcf
$ make install-pcf
$ sudo make fontdir

...and I restarted X11 again, and even my whole computer just for good measure, and I even verified that there were now a bunch of files like /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/ter-u14n.pcf.gz on my system, but still:

$ xterm -font ter-u14n
xterm:  unable to open font "ter-u14n", trying "fixed"....

What is the magical incantation I have to perform in order to get this font working with xterm?

linux

3 Answers

  1. Ubuntu has a package:

    apt-get install xfonts-terminus xfonts-terminus-oblique

    Note that this is in the universe repository, so you may have to add that to /etc/apt/sources.list.

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  2. After installing xfonts-terminus in Debian Wheezy I needed to do:

    $ xset fp rehash

    also, my ~/.Xresources says:

    xterm*utf8: 1
xterm*font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1

    , where -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-100-iso10646-1 is taken from the fonts.dir file where the font is installed. In my case it's /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/fonts.dir.

    You use xterm*utf8: 1 and choose iso10646-1 if you want utf-8. You might also need to call the wrapper script uxterm instead of xterm for utf-8 to work properly in your terminal.

    All changes in ~/.Xresources require you to do:

    $ xrdb ~/.Xresources

    to make them register in the current X session.

    The xterm*font rule may be also written with wildcard asterisks like that:

    xterm*font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-*--20-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-*

    I hope this will be helpful to anybody who stumbles upon a similar problem.

    • 2

  3. Are the fonts listed in the encodings.dir, fonts.alias, and fonts.dir files under /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc?

    Its been quite a while since I needed to add fonts on a linux host but there are helper utils, named mkfontdir, update-fonts-alias, update-fonts-dir, and update-fonts-scale, that should be installed by default. They handle updating the metainfo that tells the X server about fonts installed on the system. See the man pages for them.

    On Debian based systems (Ubuntu has a Debian heritage), when a font .deb package is added a helper normally calls mkfontdirs automatically. Installing the font using make may not have set things up the way your system expects.

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