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Xterms, colors, fonts

Unix is basically a command-line driven operating system as opposed to, say, MacOS, where you click on icons to make programs run. Thus it is natural that the most common window you use will be the X Terminal; a window into which you can type commands, view and edit text. The basic command to create a new X Terminal window is xterm, though you can probably get xterms using the root menu and button bar.

As described in the manual page for xterm, you can create an xterm with a given size, placement, font, colors, scrollbar and pointer, using command-line options. Here is a dissected example of an xterm command. The backslash, \, at the end of a line, is the usual way of breaking a single Unix command into several lines.


  pascal>  xterm -geometry 80x24+50+200 \
		-sb -sl 100 -bg yellow -fg purple \
        	-xrm "*pointerShape: circle" \
		-fn 10x20 &

The command-line options used above are;

-geometry 80x24+50+200 --- sets the size and position of the xterm window on the monitor. The xterm will be 80 characters wide, 24 lines high, and placed on the screen 50 pixels to the right and 200 pixels down from the upper left corner.
-sb --- xterm will have a scrollbar
-sl 100 --- the xterm will remember 100 lines for scrolling
-bg yellow --- the background color
-fg purple --- the foreground (text) color
-xrm "*pointerShape: circle" --- the form for a generic X option for things that can't be done any other way; in this case, changing the shape of the pointer.
-fn 10x20 --- the font (for a full list try xlsfonts --- )
& --- the usual Unix method for running a program in the background; a new xterm will appear, and you can continue to use this previously-existing window for other commands.

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Bruce.Fast@Colorado.EDU