How can I determine what the default font it?

How can I determine what the default font it?

[exits funnel]

Hello,

I've just upgraded to emacs 21.3.1 from emacs 19.7(?)
running on RedHat Linux.  It works great but for one
immediate problem.  The default font size is much
smaller and I can barely read it.  I've done a bit of
research (I'm pretty new to Linux and well as emacs)
on changing the font size but I have a few quick
questions.  First of all it seems I can do this either
by modifying my .emacs file or by modifying
.Xdefaults.  Which approach is better?  I'm assuming
if I change .Xdefaults this will affect other programs
besides emacs.  My other question is how can I find
out what font emacs is currently displaying?  Thanks
in advance for any replies.

-exits  

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[V. L. Simpson]

>>>>> "exits" == exits funnel <exitsfunnel@yahoo.com> writes:

    > Hello, I've just upgraded to emacs 21.3.1 from emacs 19.7(?)
    
    > The default font size is much smaller and I can barely
    > read it.  I've done a bit of research (I'm pretty new to Linux
    > and well as emacs) on changing the font size but I have a few
    > quick questions.  First of all it seems I can do this either by
    > modifying my .emacs file or by modifying .Xdefaults.  Which
    > approach is better?  I'm assuming if I change .Xdefaults this
    > will affect other programs besides emacs.  

Only if you do it wrong 8-].

Read the section on "Frame Parameters" and X resources in the Emacs
Reference Manual. 

    > My other question is how can I find out what font emacs is
    > currently displaying?  Thanks in advance for any replies.

Run the function 'frame-parameters' to get a list of all the the
attributes of the current frame.  Type (frame-parameters) in the
scratch buffer, press Ctrl-j right after that expression and it will
print out a list of all the current parameters for that frame.

Have fun
vls

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

exits funnel <exitsfunnel@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I've just upgraded to emacs 21.3.1 from emacs 19.7(?)
>running on RedHat Linux.  It works great but for one
>immediate problem.  The default font size is much
>smaller and I can barely read it.  I've done a bit of
>research (I'm pretty new to Linux and well as emacs)
>on changing the font size but I have a few quick
>questions.  First of all it seems I can do this either
>by modifying my .emacs file or by modifying
>.Xdefaults.  Which approach is better?

You'll want to note that basically all of this applies not only
to Emacs, but to xterms as well, where you will probably have
exactly the same problem.  (I use a 1333x1000 resolution screen,
and have fits trying to work out fonts that provide readable
text in windows of the right size.)

Probably .Xdefaults is best, because that relates closely to the
X configuration (which is where the screen resolution is
chosen).  You can use the same ~/.emacs file, regardless of the
X configuration if you specify font sizes with the X
configuration rather than the Emacs configuration.

There still seem to be lots of "gotchas", and I haven't worked
it out well enough for GNU Emacs (mostly because I normally use
XEmacs, and they don't work quite the same).  In particular,
it is necessary to go through the faces customization menu
and set fonts.  And I've found that some fonts simply can't
be manipulated by GNU Emacs (for reasons that I do not at all
understand).  For example, I rather like, in XEmacs, using the
-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed fonts.  But GNU Emacs can't
scale them, and attempts to do so result in very small sizes.

One comment on testing changes to ~/.Xdefaults before going on
to the rest of this.  To test a new configuration you can use
xrdb to effect the new configuration, but there are two ways
to do it.

  xrdb -merge .Xdefaults

is usually recommended, but it will not delete something you
have removed from .Xdefaults.  It will add, and it will change,
but no deletions.  But,

  xrdb .Xdefaults

will replace the existing definitions with the new definitions,
which means something that is not defined in the new file will
not exist after that command.  Hence it will delete what you've
removed, but it also deletes everything from any other
initialization files.  I.e., it's good for testing, but you'll
want to restart X when you are done.

>I'm assuming
>if I change .Xdefaults this will affect other programs
>besides emacs.

Only if you want it to.   For example,

  *font:  -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

will affect virtually everything ending in "font" that is not
otherwise specifically set, and hence is probably not a good
idea.  There are two ways to be specific,

Emacs*font:  -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
Emacs.font:  -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

will both affect either Emacs or XEmacs, but nothing else. While

XEmacs*font:  -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
XEmacs.font:  -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

will both affect only XEmacs and not GNU Emacs.

The difference between using the '*' wildcard or not, is that
the wild card will set all Emacs resources that end in "font",
that are not more specifically defined, while using the "."
specifies one and only one resource.  Hence, if you have only

Emacs.font:  -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

you might have not set several fonts, and they will default to
something like "fixed", which is exceedingly small and moreover
Emacs can neither scale it or find variations for such as
bold, italic, or underline.

But if you set 

Emacs*font:  9x15

you're screwed too, because everything is set to a font that
Emacs cannot manipulate.

However, I don't know that Emacs has any resource ending in
"font" other than the default, so it (may or) may not make any
difference at all.  But definitely with other programs that is
significant...  (for colors and other resources as well as
fonts).

>My other question is how can I find
>out what font emacs is currently displaying?  Thanks
>in advance for any replies.

You can do "M-x list-faces-display" which will give you
a line of text for each face that is defined.  It gives you
the variable for that particular face, and you can select
from that buffer any of the face names and change the font
or other properties.  For example, with some fonts being
too small (once you have the basic defaults set in .Xdefaults),
you can browse the list and change the ones that are hard
to read.

There are some strange things happen with fonts in GNU Emacs
that you may or may not bothered by.  One is the way tabs are
offset.  I have the following in my .Xdefaults file, and used it
for checking the results of font changes.

 #
 #  When playing with fonts for GNU Emacs, the tabs do not
 #  necessarily line up where they should when fonts are scaled.
 #  The following chart uses tabs between the 'T' characters, and
 #  spaces between the '|' characters.  They should line up
 #  exactly...
 #
 #	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
 #1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789
 #       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |

Note the comment about tabs between the "T" characters on the
chart.  If, between my writing this and you reading it, they get
changed to spaces, it won't provide the needed value...

A couple recommendations.  Change the size to suit your needs,
but for menus and pop-ups the proportional spacing with a
helvetica font is much nicer.  I use bold to make it more readable
too. YMMV, of course.

 #
 # Font  menus
 #
 Emacs*menubar*font: -*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
 Emacs*popup*font:   -*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*

Here is what I like for the default font.  Unfortunately, GNU Emacs
(unlike XEmacs) can't seem to scale this font.

 Emacs.font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed-*-25-*-100-*-*-*-iso8859-1

Here is what I set for attribute fonts.

 Emacs.default.attributeFont:     -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
 Emacs.bold.attributeFont:        -*-courier-bold-r-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
 Emacs.italic.attributeFont:      -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
 Emacs.bold-italic.attributeFont: -*-courier-bold-r-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

(Note that I don't use the oblique font for italics, because it is
just too ugly to look at and hard to read.)

However, despite having set those in ~/.Xdefaults, I'm pretty
sure that I've changed every one of them using the customize
menu, and therefore that is overridden by custom-set-faces
written to ~/.emacs.el.  The problem is that while the courier
fonts do scale, it is at intervals and is not a continuous
allowable range, and the trick is to get a size to most closely
match the default font's size.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Jason Rumney]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> You'll want to note that basically all of this applies not only
> to Emacs, but to xterms as well, where you will probably have
> exactly the same problem.  (I use a 1333x1000 resolution screen,
> and have fits trying to work out fonts that provide readable
> text in windows of the right size.)

Then set your dpi correctly, so X can compensate. Since 21.1, Emacs
default fonts are specified in point sizes rather than pixel sizes.

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

jasonr (Jason Rumney) @  f2s.com wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>
>> You'll want to note that basically all of this applies not only
>> to Emacs, but to xterms as well, where you will probably have
>> exactly the same problem.  (I use a 1333x1000 resolution screen,
>> and have fits trying to work out fonts that provide readable
>> text in windows of the right size.)
>
>Then set your dpi correctly, so X can compensate. Since 21.1, Emacs
>default fonts are specified in point sizes rather than pixel sizes.

Can you be less cryptic?

--
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Kai Grossjohann]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> jasonr (Jason Rumney) @  f2s.com wrote:
>>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>>
>>Then set your dpi correctly, so X can compensate. Since 21.1, Emacs
>>default fonts are specified in point sizes rather than pixel sizes.
>
> Can you be less cryptic?

Different monitors/displays show a pixel in different sizes.  Pixel
size is usually measured in pixels per inch, or dots per inch, aka
DPI.

The X server has a configuration option (in /etc/X11/XF86Config, I
believe) where you can tell it about the dpi of your monitor/display.

Emacs used to specify font sizes in pixel, so regardless of what dpi
you specified in X11, the standard font was N pixels tall.

But now, Emacs specifies font sizes in point (1/72th of an inch), so
the number of pixels of the default font size depends on the dpi
setting.  Let's say you specify a 12pt font, then that's 1/6 inches.
If you have 6 dpi, then Emacs will choose 1 pixel to display it.  If
you have 60 dpi, then Emacs will choose 10 pixels to display it.

This method works for many applications.

Kai

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>
>> jasonr (Jason Rumney) @  f2s.com wrote:
>>>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>>>
>>>Then set your dpi correctly, so X can compensate. Since 21.1, Emacs
>>>default fonts are specified in point sizes rather than pixel sizes.
>>
>> Can you be less cryptic?

Perhaps I was too cryptic too!

I was asking about how it related to the article it referenced.
Neither you or Jason have helped the OP to configure his Emacs,
and I believe that was the intention of my article.

>Different monitors/displays show a pixel in different sizes.  Pixel
>size is usually measured in pixels per inch, or dots per inch, aka
>DPI.

DPI is screen resolution.  It is a function of the X server's
configured scan rate (vertical in this case, though usually what
is referenced is only the horizontal) and the physical size of
the monitor's viewable screen.

>The X server has a configuration option (in /etc/X11/XF86Config, I
>believe) where you can tell it about the dpi of your monitor/display.

Actually, you don't tell it "about" it, you flat force it to a
specific resolution by setting the scan rate (rather than DPI,
which is a derived value which also depends on the monitor size,
a characteristic that the X server does not know about and does
not care about, and hence is not part of the X configuration and
is only a number you might just happen to know, though it is
useless information for the most part).

Jason can't seriously be suggesting that the answer to Emacs
font configuration is "Then set your dpi correctly"???  Surely
what he meant wasn't quite what he said.

>Emacs used to specify font sizes in pixel, so regardless of what dpi
>you specified in X11, the standard font was N pixels tall.

How does that relate to the article to which Jason was replying?
What that article listed was .Xdefault settings such as this:

 Emacs.default.attributeFont:    -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

What would you suggest changing in that specification?  Which,
incidentally, works quite well... as near as I can tell.  Is
there some benefit to a different manner of specification?

>But now, Emacs specifies font sizes in point (1/72th of an inch), so
>the number of pixels of the default font size depends on the dpi
>setting.  Let's say you specify a 12pt font, then that's 1/6 inches.
>If you have 6 dpi, then Emacs will choose 1 pixel to display it.  If
>you have 60 dpi, then Emacs will choose 10 pixels to display it.
>
>This method works for many applications.

How does that relate to the topic at hand?  Please provide an
example demonstrating something other than what I've previously
posted that will work better.

Otherwise, rather than describe well known characterstics of
point size, why don't we discuss the less known little objects
like em's and en's, which are also relative and can't be
measured in specific numbers of pt's.

--
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[exits funnel]

--- "V. L. Simpson" <vls@m-net.arbornet.org> wrote:
> Run the function 'frame-parameters' to get a list of
> all the the
> attributes of the current frame.  Type
> (frame-parameters) in the
> scratch buffer, press Ctrl-j right after that
> expression and it will
> print out a list of all the current parameters for
> that frame.

VLS, this is helfpful but unfortunately I don't see
the default-font as a parameter.  The last entry in
the returned list is '...' which I assume means that
the list was truncated.  Is this right?  If so, how
can I see all of attributes?  Thnks again.

-exits


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Robert Marshall]

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, exits funnel wrote:

> 
> 
> VLS, this is helfpful but unfortunately I don't see
> the default-font as a parameter.  The last entry in
> the returned list is '...' which I assume means that
> the list was truncated.  Is this right?  If so, how
> can I see all of attributes?  Thnks again.
> 

click on the ...

Robert
-- 
La grenouille songe..dans son château d'eau

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[V. L. Simpson]

>>>>> "exits" == exits funnel <exitsfunnel@yahoo.com> writes:


    > VLS, this is helfpful but unfortunately I don't see the
    > default-font as a parameter.  The last entry in the returned
    > list is '...' which I assume means that the list was truncated.
    > Is this right?  If so, how can I see all of attributes?  Thnks
    > again.

Click mouse-2 in the list to uncollapse it or put the cursor in the
list and hit return.

Sorry about that.  I have that disabled and forget about that bit of
display fluffery.

vls

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Kai Grossjohann]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>>
>>> jasonr (Jason Rumney) @  f2s.com wrote:
>>>>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>>>>
>>>>Then set your dpi correctly, so X can compensate. Since 21.1, Emacs
>>>>default fonts are specified in point sizes rather than pixel sizes.
>>>
>>> Can you be less cryptic?
>
> Perhaps I was too cryptic too!

Apparently :-)

> I was asking about how it related to the article it referenced.
> Neither you or Jason have helped the OP to configure his Emacs,
> and I believe that was the intention of my article.

Hm?  Neither Jason nor I answered the OP's stated question.  However,
the *real* problem appeared to be that he couldn't read the font.  And
frobbing the dpi setting will choose a different font, which might be
legible.

>>Different monitors/displays show a pixel in different sizes.  Pixel
>>size is usually measured in pixels per inch, or dots per inch, aka
>>DPI.
>
> DPI is screen resolution.  It is a function of the X server's
> configured scan rate (vertical in this case, though usually what
> is referenced is only the horizontal) and the physical size of
> the monitor's viewable screen.

Maybe the word "screen resolution" comes with different definitions,
depending on who's talking.

When I hear "screen resolution", I think of values such as "1024x768".

>>The X server has a configuration option (in /etc/X11/XF86Config, I
>>believe) where you can tell it about the dpi of your monitor/display.
>
> Actually, you don't tell it "about" it, you flat force it to a
> specific resolution by setting the scan rate (rather than DPI,
> which is a derived value which also depends on the monitor size,
> a characteristic that the X server does not know about and does
> not care about, and hence is not part of the X configuration and
> is only a number you might just happen to know, though it is
> useless information for the most part).

I apologize.  It is true that you cannot specify the DPI in
/etc/X11/XF86Config.

But I also wasn't referring to the scan rate, either.

I was referring to the "-dpi" switch for the (XFree86) X server.  (I
just misremembered things and thought it was configurable in
XF86Config.)  If you invoke the X server with "-dpi 100" and some X11
program wishes to use a 72pt (1 inch tall) font, then the X server
will use 100 pixels for this.  If you invoke the X server with "-dpi
200" instead, then the X server will use 200 pixels.

So when the *same* program requests a font of the *same* size, the
actually visible results will be different, depending on the value of
"-dpi".

So just invoking the X server with a different -dpi value can cause
many applications to use larger (or smaller) fonts.  That's a Good
Thing, IMHO, since it does not require you to tweak each application
individually.

[time passes]

Oh, now I see the DisplaySize parameter in "man XF86Config".

> Jason can't seriously be suggesting that the answer to Emacs
> font configuration is "Then set your dpi correctly"???  Surely
> what he meant wasn't quite what he said.

I didn't find this answer to be totally unreasonable.  It was terse,
but not unreasonable.

But, of course, I can't mindread and thus I don't really know what he
meant.

>>Emacs used to specify font sizes in pixel, so regardless of what dpi
>>you specified in X11, the standard font was N pixels tall.
>
> How does that relate to the article to which Jason was replying?
> What that article listed was .Xdefault settings such as this:
>
>  Emacs.default.attributeFont:    -*-courier-*-*-*-*-23-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
>
> What would you suggest changing in that specification?  Which,
> incidentally, works quite well... as near as I can tell.  Is
> there some benefit to a different manner of specification?

My suggestion was not to change that specification at all.  Instead,
invoke the X server with a different -dpi value.

>>But now, Emacs specifies font sizes in point (1/72th of an inch), so
>>the number of pixels of the default font size depends on the dpi
>>setting.  Let's say you specify a 12pt font, then that's 1/6 inches.
>>If you have 6 dpi, then Emacs will choose 1 pixel to display it.  If
>>you have 60 dpi, then Emacs will choose 10 pixels to display it.
>>
>>This method works for many applications.
>
> How does that relate to the topic at hand?  Please provide an
> example demonstrating something other than what I've previously
> posted that will work better.

On my Debian system, /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/X11/X -dpi 100 -nolisten tcp

Start X11, start Emacs, look at it.  Then change the 100 into 200,
start X11 again, start Emacs, look at it.  Can you observe the
difference?

> Otherwise, rather than describe well known characterstics of
> point size, why don't we discuss the less known little objects
> like em's and en's, which are also relative and can't be
> measured in specific numbers of pt's.

I think most font sizes are not specified in ems and ens.  But many
font sizes are specified in pts.  This makes pts more relevant to the
issue at hand than ems and ens.

Kai

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>> Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> wrote:
>>>floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:
>>>>
>>>> Can you be less cryptic?
>>
>> Perhaps I was too cryptic too!
>
>Apparently :-)
>
>> I was asking about how it related to the article it referenced.
>> Neither you or Jason have helped the OP to configure his Emacs,
>> and I believe that was the intention of my article.
>
>Hm?  Neither Jason nor I answered the OP's stated question.  However,

Thank you!  That was an excellent article, which provided some
very useful information.  It did not assume that the reader already
knew enough to not need to ask the questions that had been asked.

--
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Jason Rumney]

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) writes:

> I was asking about how it related to the article it referenced.
> Neither you or Jason have helped the OP to configure his Emacs,
> and I believe that was the intention of my article.

I didn't help the original poster configure his Emacs, because I felt
that you had already given him sufficient information already. But
you did mention that you had a more general font-size problem (with
xterm as well as Emacs), so I proposed a more general solution,
though I didn't take the time to go into the great detail that you
did answering the OP's question because it was slightly off-topic.

Re: How can I determine what the default font it?

[Kevin Rodgers]

exits funnel wrote:
 > --- "V. L. Simpson" <vls@m-net.arbornet.org> wrote:
 >>Run the function 'frame-parameters' to get a list of all the the
 >>attributes of the current frame.  Type (frame-parameters) in the
 >>scratch buffer, press Ctrl-j right after that expression and it will
 >>print out a list of all the current parameters for that frame.
 >
 > VLS, this is helfpful but unfortunately I don't see the default-font
 > as a parameter.  The last entry in the returned list is '...' which I
 > assume means that the list was truncated.  Is this right?  If so, how
 > can I see all of attributes?  Thnks again.

If it was specified, it would be `font' not `default-font'.  But if it's
not specified, you need to look elsewhere:

(or (assq 'font default-frame-alist)
     (x-get-resource "default.attributeFont" "Face.AttributeFont")
     (x-get-resource "font" "Font")
     (fontset-font t ?a))

-- 
Kevin Rodgers