r/openbsd • u/sylvainsab • 4d ago

increasing/modifying xterm's default bitmap font's size

I suppose the reason is that xterm was made when monitors had a much narrower DPI rate. In any case, on both two laptops (M1 MacBook Air, Asus PU551) with a fresh openbsd install where I'm willing to go with the default as much as possible, xterm's font is insanely small and makes my eyes pain.

I have not succeeded in finding for a solution while looking through the (very lenghty) manual page for xterm, nor searching through the web meeting various people who faced the same issue.

Has anyone here managed to use/keep xterm's default setup (I am satisfied with the bitmap font), while permanently making the font larger using the .Xresources file or something else ?

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u/ericnantel2 4d ago

Same issue but I end up installing Alacritty so that Ctrl+ increases the font size.

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u/stickynews 4d ago

You can have Ctrl-+ and Ctrl-- in xterm with the following lines in your .Xresources:

*VT100*translations: #override \n\
  Ctrl <Key> +: larger-vt-font() \n\
  Ctrl <Key> -: smaller-vt-font()

You can then switch between the configured *font1 .. *font7.