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Emacs font customising

Emacs uses font in many contexts. Each is customisable, but you'll need to work through menus to discover all the options.

Using Menus

From the Options menu choose Customize Emacs and then Specific Face menu. You'll get this prompt

   Customize face: (default all)

Accept the default and you'll get a screen that begins like this

Scroll down until you find

and click on Show. You'll get something like this

If you edit a field (for example if you change the height to 200) and go back to the top of the screen you can decide whether to make this change just for the current session or permanently.

Avoiding Menus

If you just want to use a different default font (12x24, say - typing xlsfonts will often list the fonts available) then you can start emacs by doing "emacs -fn 12x24&". If you want to make the change permanent, create a file called .Xdefaults in your home folder and add this line to it

   emacs.font: 12x24

Next time you log in, emacs will use this font by default.

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