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XTerm resources (mousewheel zoom, spawn...)

x resources

If you are still using command-line switches to setup your terminals, I recommend you have a quick read about .Xdefaults or xrdb, you can start with xrdb(1)'s man page. This is how you set specific application resources on old-school X programs, such as xterm(1). You can usually find all the resources for an app on its man page.

zoom with browser-style bindings (mousewheel and ctrl)

If you have huge monitors and got used to zoom web pages with Ctrl+MouseWheel and Ctrl-+/- then this is for you, assuming your have terminals with multiple font sizes defined (see next section).

The default keyboard bindings for increasing and decreasing the font size are Shift+Keypad_+ and Shift+Keypad_-. This is all fine and good if you have a full keyboard but gets annoying if you have a laptop and need to press 6 keys to get a virtual numeric keypad, or use the Ctrl-RightClick menu.

*VT100.Translations: #override Ctrl <Btn4Down>: larger-vt-font() \n\
	Ctrl <Btn5Down>: smaller-vt-font() \n\
	Shift Ctrl <Key>=: larger-vt-font() \n\
	Shift Ctrl <Key>-: smaller-vt-font() 

fontFace and fontSizes

The above is useful of you can define your own font and sizes. By the way, if you haven't tried Inconsolata in your terminals, give it a shot, it is worth it.

XTerm*faceName:		Inconsolata
XTerm*faceSize:		12
XTerm*faceSize1:	8
XTerm*faceSize2:	9
XTerm*faceSize3:	10
XTerm*faceSize4:	12
XTerm*faceSize5:	16
XTerm*faceSize6:	24

spawn-new-terminal

How often do you have a terminal opened somewhere in your files and need to open a new terminal at the same exact place? Of course, you could use xterm &, but what if you are within vim, within mutt or just can't run any shell command?

XTerm has a cool function that is not bound to any key by default, I personally bound it to F12, here is the code, of course, remove the '#override' if you plan on mixing it with the above snippet.

*VT100.Translations: #override <Key>F12: spawn-new-terminal()

comments

whiteinge (204.77.233.46) wrote on 2010-02-20 at 03:11:
I didn't realize this was possible. Thanks! After consulting the manpage I also added the following mapping to reset the font to default: Shift Ctrl 0: set-vt-font(d)

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Last Update: 2010-01-12 · Bertrand Janin <tamentis@neopulsar.org> · Powered by Python & Debian GNU/Linux