Changing the Default Font in your XTerm

When you are in an XTerm you can hold down the CTRL key and then right click to get a menu called "VT Fonts" and select one of the following options "Default, Unreadable, Tiny, Small, Medium, Large and Huge" to change the font size.

I wanted to get my XTerm to default to the "Huge" option but couldn't seem to find a positive method on the internet of how to find out exactly how that setting was reached and then how to make it the system or an individual users default.

That was before I found out about editres the "X Resource Editor". Following are the steps I used to change the default font in my XTerm.

1. Launch an xterm
	xterm
2. From the command line editres
	editres
3. On the "Commands" menu of editres select "Get Tree"
4. With the cross hairs that appear click the white area of your XTerm
5. You should see a Widget Tree similar as follows

         --------
        |shellext|
 ----- / --------
|xterm| 
 ----- \
         -----
        |vt100|
         -----
6. Select the vt100 widget and select "Show Resource Box" from the "Commands" menu
7. You will see a list of X Resources the "font" option holds the default font value.
8. To find out what the default font value is currently scroll to "font" and select it then centre click (If you have a 3 button mouse this is the middle mouse button, If like me you have a 2 button mouse then click both buttons at the same time - Note you may need the Emulate3Buttons options set in your XF86Config or xorg.conf file for this to work)
9. The current value of "font" will appear in the "Enter Resource Value" box (by default this will be "fixed" - On RedHat FC2 anyway)
10. Now you have to save the resource string, click the "Set Save File" box and enter a file name. Once you have done this click save and the string will be appended to the file name you entered (you will find the file in the current directory from wherever you launched editres)
11. When you look at the file you named and saved above. The "font" resource string will look like this ".xterm.vt100.font: fixed" 
12. Now you need to find the value of the "Huge" sized font
13. In editres's Resource Box select "font6" and then middle or both button click to have the value appear in the "Enter Resource Value" box.
14. This value will be something like "10x20" edit the value in the file you saved to include this value.
15. This is the value you should end up with
 
	.xterm.vt100.font: 10x20

16. Once you have the "Huge" fonts value and have edited the default string. You now have to append it to one of 2 files. 
	/etc/X11/Xresources for a system wide change 
	or
	~/.Xresources for an individual change.
17. To make the change immediate without restarting X simply run
	xrdb /path/to/Xresources



Troubleshooting:

I had some difficulty finding the correct resource string under XFCE 4.1.99.3
for xterm I ended up playing with the placing of the * and dots and also the
case on the Xterm xterm here is the successful string that I added to
/etc/X11/Xresources


.XTerm*font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--18-120-100-100-c-90-iso10646-1