From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 21 04:11:09 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61DCC106566C for ; Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:11:09 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from doug@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [65.122.17.41]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0DC9B8FC1A for ; Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:11:08 +0000 (UTC) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost.watson.org [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id nBL4B8JF041702 for ; Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:11:08 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from doug@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (doug@localhost) by fledge.watson.org (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) with ESMTP id nBL4B8hK041699 for ; Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:11:08 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from doug@fledge.watson.org) Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:11:08 -0500 (EST) From: doug To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Message-ID: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.3 (fledge.watson.org [127.0.0.1]); Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:11:08 -0500 (EST) Cc: Subject: Setting fonts and other defaults in Xorg X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: doug@safeport.com List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:11:09 -0000 In trying to upgrade Xorg and firefox I ended up learning about portmaster and how to solve some things in xterm that have been bugging me for longer than I will admit to having and not fixing. First portmaster. If you find portupgrade too complex or for any other reason do not want to use it, this port is well worth a look. For one, it is written in shell script and so has no requirements. The latest version even has the -PP option which for me is the only way to go with Xorg and KDE. In getting Xorg 7.4 installed and using twm to complete setting up my work station, I found the black background intolerable. I turns out the answer to changing this is remarkably hard to find. And I did not. Warren Block provided the answer as an aside to trying to help me with larger Xorg woes. The other thing that bugged me for so long is/was setting fonts in xterm. I often want to use the small or tiny setting which are (at least on my PCs/laptops) less than ideal. All of this turns out to be relatively straight forward. 1) background: xsetroot -grey (is one choice). This command can be added to /usr/local/lib/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 or to .xinitrc (according to Google). 2) fonts: There are a couple of cool commands, fc-list and xfontsel to list the installed fonts. I used these to set fonts after testing options by starting some variations with xterm -fa 'Liberation Mono' -fs 10 xterm -fa "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" -fs 9 After finding what you like simply add the lines to ~/.Xdefaults: XTerm*faceName: Liberation Mono XTerm*faceSize: 10 You can make similar changes to /usr/local/share/X11/app-defaults to change other things. Most the file here use the format given by xfontsl. I think a section in the handbook that documented some of the above as well as the relation between .xsession, .xinitrc, .Xdefaults, .xresource and other files would be helpful especially to new users. There is probably other basic information, I would take a shot at it if I had the background.