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I'm using GNU unifont on FreeBSD and would like to have the same font available under Windows7 in a cygwin terminal. My attempts to install GNU unifont for general use (so it would be available in font selection) in Windows7 were futile, as I'm a newcomer to the Seattle family of operating systems.

I have the unifont available in many formats (ttf.gz, zip, bdf.gz, pcf.gz), as offered on GNU Unifont Glyphs. Can a cygwin terminal be made to use any of these?

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  • Erm, nice avatar.
    – paradroid
    Apr 17, 2011 at 22:57

1 Answer 1

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Instead of teaching a Windows cmd.exe window to use GNU unifont, I decided to install X11 for Cygwin, then configure X11 to use the desired font. That way I have all the goodies of xterm right at my fingertips. Here's how to do it.

  1. If you haven't already, install the X11 that comes with Cygwin. See Cygwin/X User's Guide http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/cygwin-x-ug.html for details. When selecting additional X11 utilities, be sure to add mkfontdir and xset from category X11.
  2. Decide for a directory to place the GNU unifont. I chose ~/X11/font for the following.
  3. cp unifont.pcf.gz ~/X11/font/unifont.pcf.gz
  4. mkfontdir ~/X11/font
  5. If not already running, start an X server, e.g. with startxwin
  6. export DISPLAY=:0
  7. xset +fp ~/X11/font
  8. xterm -fn '-gnu-unifont-medium-r-normal--16-160-75-75-c-80-iso10646-1'

Voilà!

You probably want to place the commands starting with step 6 in ~/.startxwinrc so they get read and executed automatically by startxwin.

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