How to make XTerm never use bold characters

colorsdisplay-settingsfontsxterm

I am trying to make XTerm to never use a bold font, and nothing seems to work. I put settings in ~/.Xresources and then run xrdb ~/.Xresources and then start a new XTerm. This is what I try:

XTerm*background: gray90
XTerm*foreground: black
XTerm*highlightColor: yellow
XTerm*pointerColor: red
XTerm*pointerColorBackground: white
XTerm*cursorColor: navy
XTerm*borderColor: black

Xterm*colorBD: black
XTerm*colorBDMode: true

XTerm*boldMode: false
XTerm*alwaysBoldMode: false

XTerm*font:        -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1
XTerm*boldFont:    -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1
XTerm*utf8Fonts.font:        -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1
XTerm*utf8Fonts.boldFont:    -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1

And still for example when I run Midnight Commander all directory names are with thick letters, and I want them the same as normal files, just use a color, but not make them thicker! In VIM everything uses thick letters when syntax highlighting is used (but is OK – thin – when there is no syntax highlighting).

I am out of ideas, what to put in my ~/.Xresources to force XTerm to never use those thick letters?

Best Answer

You should stick this in your ~/.Xresources file or maybe the deprecated ~/.Xdefaults file:

XTerm*allowBoldFonts:       false

You can also press Ctrl while right-clicking xterm and tick/untick the Bold Fonts option.

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P.s: Reading the xterm manual page I also found an easier way to achieve this:

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P.P.s: I do not think setting resources in ~/.Xresources will take effect unless you merge them in with xrdb. The xterm process on the Linux computer will query the X server running on your windows computer. At the time where xterm starts it is very unlikely that your X-Win32 server has the xterm* resources set. But you might be able to set resources in X-Win32 if it supports that.

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