On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Claude Marinier wrote:

> My PC is running NetBSD 1.5.2 with X and I am somewhat new to X11R6.
> I have been looking for a way to convince xterm to start with the large
> font (middle age vision). I have been crusing the man pages and the BBI
> (Big Bad Internet) and I have found all sorts of hints but no clear
> solution.
>
> I was about to modify the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm but
> thought that I would check with you all first.
>
> What is the best way to do this?

What you can do, is create a file ".Xresources" in your home
directory, and also set "XENVIRONMENT=${HOME}/.Xresources" in your
initialization scripts -- "~/.xsession" if you use "xdm", "~/.xinitrc"
for "startx" -- but just set it and export it the environment for now.
Then you can put any X resource setting you like in "~/.Xresources",
and it takes effect the very next time the program in question is run.
(The chief advantage to doing it this way, rather than modifying
".../app-defaults/XTerm", is that your change won't go away when X or
your system is upgraded.)

Now to make the large font the default, just put

XTerm.VT100.font:	9x15

in "~/.Xresources". By the way, the default font, "fixed", is short
for "-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1".
That translation is specified in
"/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias". The alias of "9x15" is
defined there, too. You can browse all the fonts available to the
Xserver with "xfontsel", pick something that looks good, and test it
on the command line before putting it into "~/.Xresources": .e.g.:

xterm -fn '-bitstream-courier-medium-r-normal-*-15-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'

Frederick