How to get better-looking fonts in the terminal (URxvt)

fontsterminalurxvtx11

I've noticed that the fonts in URxvt look a little bit low-res compared to fonts that I see in my browser, for example.

I was wondering how could I fix my .Xdefaults file to make the fonts have a little bit more detail and be sharper.

It might not be visible in this picture, but I can definitely notice the difference when looking myself:

enter image description here

Here is my current .Xdefaults:

URxvt*background: Black
URxvt*foreground: White
URxvt*geometry: 80x30
URxvt*scrollBar: false

"URxvt.font: 9x15

!-- Xft settings -- !
Xft.dpi:        96
Xft.antialias:  true
Xft.rgba:       rgb
Xft.hinting:    true
Xft.hintstyle:  hintfull

! -- Fonts -- !
URxvt.font:xft:Monospace:pixelsize=15
URxvt.boldfont:xft:Monospace-Bold:pixelsize=15

Best Answer

In ~/.Xresources, put, for example, the below config. (There are some other configurations of urxvt that might interest you here (note that this is a plain text file, posted on the web; you may want to use "View Source" to read it). There you also find another color scheme, that might be better if you ever experience eye problems because of too bright lights emitting from a monitor. More colors stuff.)

Then, in ~/.xinitrc, put xrdb ~/.Xresources.

For testing, an alias like alias xup="xrdb ~/.Xresources" could be useful, then simply start a new instance of urxvt.

URxvt.font:     xft:bitstream vera sans mono:size=16:antialias=true
URxvt.boldFont: xft:bitstream vera sans mono:bold:size=16:antialias=true

URxvt*color0:  #000000 // black
URxvt*color1:  #B40000 // red
URxvt*color2:  #00AA00 // green
URxvt*color3:  #AAAA00 // yellow
URxvt*color4:  #5555AA // blue
URxvt*color5:  #AA00AA // magenta
URxvt*color6:  #00AAAA // cyan
URxvt*color7:  #AAAAAA // white
URxvt*color8:  #555555 // black (now and below: bright)
URxvt*color9:  #FF0000 // red
URxvt*color10: #00FF00 // green
URxvt*color11: #FFFF00 // yellow
URxvt*color12: #6464FF // blue
URxvt*color13: #FF00FF // magenta
URxvt*color14: #00FFFF // cyan
URxvt*color15: #FFFFFF // white

Here is what it looks like:

urxvt:

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Trying to achieve fake transparency in Urxvt – can only get a black background

I've temporarily solved it - not a perfect hack, but it works.

To anyone who might want to use Urxvt with Ranger FM, using w3mimg-preview and transparency:

It won't work using true transparency, and I had problems getting a grey, false-transparent background in Urxvt using .Xdefaults.

So i turned to using Transset with the program Devilspie which makes every Urxvt window transparent as such:

Sudo apt-get install Devilspie && transset.
Mkdir ~/.devilspie && touch urxvt.ds

Vim ~/.devilspie/urxvt.ds with following contents:

    (if

(matches (window_class) "URxvt")
(begin
  (spawn_async (str "transset-df -i " (window_xid) " .95" ) )
)
)

(Credit to the author of the following post)

Added devilspie & to my autostart.sh (Openbox)

6 Success! Any Urxvt window I start is opaque by 95%, and I can use the transparent Urxvt with Ranger and it's image preview.

Thank you everyone for trying to help me out. Hope this might be of use for somebody in the future!

How to debug what blocks a key sequence in urxvt

urxvt don't seem to be the problem here (I'm using urxvt too). Maybe awesome blocks this key sequence.

Try to open urxvt alone (without awesome). To do this open another tty (ctrl-alt-fN) and type something like xinit urxvt -- :1, and try the key sequence. If this doesn't show results, try to change to sh, for example, and test again.

I was in a similar problem, time ago.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Trying to achieve fake transparency in Urxvt – can only get a black background

How to debug what blocks a key sequence in urxvt

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