How to get anti-aliased fonts for Cygwin with urxvt

Date: 2007-09-25 | Tags: cygwin, softwaretools, urxvt | 3 Comments

urxvt, or rxvt-unicode, is a better alternative to rxvt and xterm that supports xft (read anti-aliased) fonts. Here's how to make your terminal pretty:

You need: Cygwin with X, urxvt, and fontconfig (all available through Cygwin's setup utility)

To see the list of available fonts run: $ fc-list

Select a font and put it in your ~/.Xdefaults file. e.g.

URxvt*font: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=12
Urxvt*boldFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=12:style=Bold

Run: $ urxvt

For reference, here is the list of fonts I got:

Bitstream Charter:style=Bold
Bitstream Charter:style=Bold Italic
Bitstream Charter:style=Italic
Bitstream Charter:style=Regular
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Bold
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Bold Oblique
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Oblique
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Roman
Bitstream Vera Sans:style=Bold
Bitstream Vera Sans:style=Bold Oblique
Bitstream Vera Sans:style=Oblique
Bitstream Vera Sans:style=Roman
Bitstream Vera Serif:style=Bold
Bitstream Vera Serif:style=Roman
Charter:style=Bold
Charter:style=Bold Italic
Charter:style=Italic
Charter:style=Regular
Clean:style=Regular
ClearlyU Alternate Glyphs:style=Regular
ClearlyU PUA:style=Regular
ClearlyU:style=Regular
Courier 10 Pitch:style=Bold
Courier 10 Pitch:style=Bold Italic
Courier 10 Pitch:style=Italic
Courier 10 Pitch:style=Regular
Courier:style=Bold
Courier:style=Bold Italic
Courier:style=Bold Oblique
Courier:style=Italic
Courier:style=Oblique
Courier:style=Regular
Cursor:style=Regular
Fixed:style=Bold
Fixed:style=Bold SemiCondensed
Fixed:style=ja
Fixed:style=ko
Fixed:style=Oblique
Fixed:style=Oblique SemiCondensed
Fixed:style=Regular
Fixed:style=SemiCondensed
Helvetica:style=Bold
Helvetica:style=Bold Oblique
Helvetica:style=Oblique
Helvetica:style=Regular
Lucida:style=Sans
Lucida:style=Sans Bold
Lucida:style=Sans Bold Italic
Lucida:style=Sans Italic
LucidaBright:style=Italic
LucidaBright:style=Regular
LucidaTypewriter:style=Sans
LucidaTypewriter:style=Sans Bold
Luxi Mono:style=Bold
Luxi Mono:style=Bold Oblique
Luxi Mono:style=Oblique
Luxi Mono:style=Regular
Luxi Sans:style=Bold
Luxi Sans:style=Bold Oblique
Luxi Sans:style=Oblique
Luxi Sans:style=Regular
Luxi Serif:style=Bold
Luxi Serif:style=Bold Oblique
Luxi Serif:style=Oblique
Luxi Serif:style=Regular
New Century Schoolbook:style=Bold
New Century Schoolbook:style=Bold Italic
New Century Schoolbook:style=Italic
New Century Schoolbook:style=Regular
Newspaper:style=Regular
Terminal:style=Bold
Terminal:style=Regular
Times:style=Bold
Times:style=Bold Italic
Times:style=Italic
Times:style=Regular
Utopia:style=Bold
Utopia:style=Bold Italic
Utopia:style=Italic
Utopia:style=Regular

Comments

#1 dave commented on 2008-01-13:

Hey, great site! I'm learning Ruby right now, and am setting up cygwin, etc. on a wintel. Would be so much easier with MacOSX ;) Your post answered my questions. Thanks again.

#2 noufal commented on 2010-10-12:

how can i write a comment in a blog as italic style or bold

#3 thesaskwatch commented on 2011-04-15:

Hi,

I have a question. I'm playing with Cygwin a little, as I came back from Linux some time ago.

I'm having a problem with all cygwin terminals except mingetty.

Let me make an example. I'm using urxvt to view some logs. Then, I shrink the window horizontally. Of course some text gets cut. When I grow the window horizontally later, the cut text isn't redrawn anymore. I can not get this text back.

AFAIK on Linux there is no such a problem.

Is it only me? Is my term config wrong? Or this is how it all should work?