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Applications Notes

Fonts in GLterm

GLTerm is a very nice Terminal replacement, the only one which runs mc flawlessly. Unfortunately, the choice of fonts is quite limited. To use custom fonts in GLTerm you need:

1. Installed X11 from Apple or through fink 2. The getbdf utility (click here to download)

Choose a font visible to X11 (the fontname should look like ‘-adobe-utopia-bold-i-normal-‘. These names may be found in the fonts.dir and fonts.alias files under /usr -> X11R6 -> lib -> X11 -> fonts). You may try ‘fixed’ or ‘lucidasanstypewriter-12’ aliases to get the default X console font or Lucida, as well.

Start X11, go to the xterm window. You can see if your font name is correct by executing /usr/xterm -fn [fontname]. If you see no error message and you like the font in the new xterm window, you may proceed. Execute getbdf -font [fontname] > [newfontname].bdf in xterm.

Note the redirection (>), getbdf outputs to stdout by default. Copy the resulting .bdf file to /Applications -> GLterm.app -> Contents -> fonts (if your GLterm is in /Applications), either in the console or through Control-Click and Show Package Contents in the Finder. Restart GLterm, go to Preferences -> Appearance, and your custom font should be available in the list.

[Editor’s note: I tested this hint, and it works as expected, although it’s a bit more complex than expected. The one thing that threw me at first is that there are subdirectories in the “fonts” folder, and it’s those subdirectories that hold the fonts.dir and fonts.alias files. To find all the files easily, just type:

% cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts % find . -name “fonts.*”

This will list all the fonts.dir and fonts.alias files in the various subdirectories. When you’re looking in those files, the names of the font is quite long. For example, in the fonts.dir file in the “misc” subdirectory, a random font name is:

-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal–14-130-75-75-c-70-iso10646-1

You need to use that entire string as the name of your font in order for this to work. When you use the redirect, give it a nice short name!]

One reply on “Fonts in GLterm”

GLTerm is indeed a good terminal, fast, has copy-on-select and everything you want in a terminal really.

However it has some annoying features and this is where it all falls flat, the author does not offer support for this product. He doesn’t respond to emails which in my mind is very unprofessional and totally unacceptable in a commercial product.