Xft support for GNU Emacs

This article describes how to enable font anti-aliasing in Emacs using the Xft library.

Enabling anti-aliased fonts for Emacs

Installation and setup

Note
Font anti-aliasing using the Xft library and FreeType fonts is available with Emacs 23 or later.

First, set the appropriate USE flags – you must have the xft flag.

root #echo "app-editors/emacs xft" >> /etc/portage/package.use

Now it's time to install Emacs:

root #emerge --ask app-editors/emacs

You can now install some XFT fonts such as media-fonts/dejavu:

root #emerge --ask media-fonts/dejavu

Try starting Emacs with the desired XFT fonts:

user $emacs --font 'DejaVu Sans Mono-12'

If you're happy with this as your default font, set it in your ~/.Xresources:

user $

echo "Emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono-12" >> ~/.Xresources

user $

xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

Lucid toolkit

When Emacs was built with the Lucid toolkit (i.e. with the athena or Xaw3d USE flags), the font of the menubar can be set using the following in your ~/.Xresources:

CODE

Emacs.pane.menubar.font: DejaVu Sans-12

Motif toolkit

For Emacs built with the Motif toolkit (i.e. with the motif USE flag enabled), anti-aliased fonts can be enabled using the XFT font renderer in Motif. Make sure that x11-libs/motif was built with the xft flag, and add for example the following to your ~/.Xresources, in order to set the font globally:

CODE

Emacs.*.renderTable: emacs
Emacs.*.renderTable.fontType: FONT_IS_XFT
Emacs.*.renderTable.fontName: DejaVu Sans
Emacs.*.renderTable.fontSize: 10

More specific control of resources is also possible, e.g., the following will set a bold font for the menubar:

CODE

Emacs.pane.menubar.*.renderTable.fontStyle: bold

Don't forget to load the resources:

user $xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

External resources

For more details on Emacs with XFT pretty fonts, see:

XftGnuEmacs on the Emacs wiki

This page is based on a document formerly found on our main website gentoo.org.
The following people contributed to the original document: Thomas Nichols, Ulrich Müller, Christian Faulhammer
They are listed here because wiki history does not allow for any external attribution. If you edit the wiki article, please do not add yourself here; your contributions are recorded on each article's associated history page.