Changing text size in ATerminal

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Changing text size in ATerminal
started by: tedmoore99

Posted by tedmoore99 on April 22 2006,12:21

Well some of us learning DSL are not so young (I'm 68 and counting) and the text size on the ATerminal application is just too small. I have been unable to find an answer about how to increase the size of the text.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance.

Posted by mikshaw on April 22 2006,13:10

Open /home/dsl/.Xdefaults
There you will encounter a line that looks like this:

Code Sample

aterm*font: fixed

change "fixed" to something else (something bigger!). You can get a list of available fonts with the command xlsfonts|less, or you can look in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/*/fonts.alias.

If you want to keep the same "fixed" font, you might try aterm*font: 7x14 or aterm*font: 8x16 or even aterm*font: 10x20

You can test without editing .Xdefaults by starting aterm with aterm -fn <fontname>

Posted by tedmoore99 on April 23 2006,00:39

Thanks for the post. I tried the command "aterm*font: 8x16" but it didn't take until I entered it without the space after the colon(:). I now have larger type for my old eyes!

Posted by lovdsl on April 23 2006,15:52

Thanks mikshaw, one for the archive. I will add part to the post for green. hope you do not mind. many of my newbie questions were answered by you in the forum. His thanks I give to you and all who respond to my posts. hope your eyes aren't bleeding. The dict is much better with a larger font.

Posted by mikshaw on April 25 2006,20:49

An easier way to pick a font is with the xfontsel command. This is a gui application that gives you a preview of each font on your system, in all of its various forms. I thought it had been removed from DSL, so i suggested xlsfonts instead.

Posted by tedmoore99 on April 25 2006,20:58

Cool, and thanks again. I'll give xfontsel a try.

Posted by tedmoore99 on May 24 2006,21:28

Lost my fonts again. Even though ".Xdefaults" says "8x16" the term program opens with small fonts. However, I can use the run command to start the term with any font I want.

So, until I learn the answer, I am starting the term that way.
--Ted

Posted by mikshaw on May 25 2006,01:53

Not sure what the trouble would be. I just changed my .Xdefaults to Aterm*font: 8x16 and it worked. Could be that .Xdefaults isn't being read for some reason, or aterm is being opened with the -fn parameter, or maybe you're trying it as a different user?

Posted by tedmoore99 on June 07 2006,11:54

One last thought:
I right-clicked on the Aterm icon and saw "properties" which listed the command that is called when you click the icon. Modified the command by inserting "-fn 8x16" in both the regular and superuser scripts. Works fine now and is persistent.
Always more than one way to do things in Linux!
==Ted