Solved xterm kerning (letter spacing)

[borysj]

Hello! While configuring my system I managed to screw up fonts in xterm. I wasn't touching fonts or xterm itself, so I guess I happened to pkg remove a package that took a crucial font setting or resource with it.

Now, no matter which font and size I choose in .Xresources, xterm has ugly kerning with large letter spacing. The font and size do change. The kerning stays bad.

Before:


After:


I found some old solutions of similar problems, and added these lines to my .Xresources:

xterm*autohint: false
xterm*hintstyle: hintslight
xterm*hinting: 1

but to no avail. Have also tried set hinting to 0.

If I turn xterm*renderFont to false, then the problem disappears, but the font becomes very small, and does not react any longer to changes in xterm*faceName or xterm*faceSize.

Is it about a setting in .Xresources? Or did something happen to fonts themselves? I believe it is the former, because in freshly installed alacritty everything works perfect, but I do not know how to troubleshoot it further...

PS. I did follow 5.5.1 from Handbook and installed urwfonts.

 

[laurentis]

I've had a similar problem lately. Fixed it by being more specific with the facename.

from

xterm*vt100.faceName: xft:Monospace

to

xterm*vt100.faceName: xft:DejaVu Sans Mono

 

[borysj]

Thank you! Worked like a charm. Now I have to read about what exactly vt100 means, and also decide whether I will sail with xterm or with alacritty after all.

 

[SirDice]

Now I have to read about what exactly vt100 means

Back in the olden days people were connected to the "main" computer through a serial terminal, in the really olden days this was a printer with a keyboard, a TeleTYpewriter, short TTY. Those eventually got replaced with screens and keyboard, a terminal. The VT100 was one of the first that used special 'escape' codes to manipulate the cursor and the text that's shown on the other end of the serial connection. Lots of history in today's computers. Even with a modern GUI and alacritty you still have a rather basic 'serial' connection to the OS.

I will sail with xterm or with alacritty after all.

I'd use xterm-256color.