Changing menubar fonts, GNU Emacs 24.3.1?

[a***@gmail.com]

I've been totally unsuccessful with this: I want to change my Emacs menubar fonts so that they look like menus in other applications. I'm using kubuntu 14.04 64-bit, and the emacs version I'm using is:

GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.10.7)
of 2014-03-08 on lamiak, modified by Debian

I've tried customizing faces, I've tried fiddling with X resources, but so far nothing I've done has had any affect on the menu font, which is a spindly monospaced font. The font used for menus in other applications seems to be "Ubuntu 9", whatever that is.

I would have thought this would be almost trivial, but so far it seems not to be...

Any suggestions, advice, or help would be gratefully received!

Thanks,
-A.

[Yuri Khan]

Post by a***@gmail.com
GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.10.7)
of 2014-03-08 on lamiak, modified by Debian
I've tried customizing faces, I've tried fiddling with X resources, but so far nothing I've done has had any affect on the menu font, which is a spindly monospaced font. The font used for menus in other applications seems to be "Ubuntu 9", whatever that is.

You are using a GTK+3 application (Emacs) in a KDE environment. It is
likely that your theme supports Qt but not GTK+3.

Do you also suffer from the same problem when using other GTK+3
applications (e.g. synaptic or gucharmap)? If so, find a theme that
supports both Qt and GTK+3, or find a GTK+3 theme that most resembles
your chosen Qt theme.

Nothing that you do in Emacs (apart from editing GTK+3 configuration
files) will affect the appearance of menus, since they are drawn by
the toolkit, not Emacs.

[Javier]

Check if in your distribution you have a package named emacs-lucid, it
is emacs compiled with a different x-toolkit. The font font of the
menus is more 'qt'-like, not gtk.

If you dont have the package or want to tweak more yourself you can
try to compile emacs yourself and change the --with-x-toolkit option.

--with-x-toolkit=lucid

I don't know if there is a way to fine tune the menubar font.

[a***@gmail.com]

Thanks for that. I've been fiddling around with gtk settings: in themes, in the system-settings tool, but so far nothing has made any difference to the emacs menu fonts.

I have just install emacs24-lucid, and the menu fonts are indeed different - but this time big and bulky, instead of small and spindly. However! this new emacs does play nicely with the editres protocol, and so I may be able to change the menu fonts now by editing my .Xresources file.

Thanks again, and I'll keep you posted.

-A.

[Javier]

You can test the xresources directly in the command line:

emacs -xrm 'Emacs.pane.menubar.font: Courier'
emacs -xrm 'Emacs.pane.menubar.font: 10x20'

This works in my emacs-lucid.

In any case, I think that your system has some missing fonts that were
not installed. I use emacs-lucid myself and the default menubar font
is very small sized. You can always see the default font with 'emacs
-Q'. It disables all configs and xresources.

Post by a***@gmail.com
Thanks for that. I've been fiddling around with gtk settings: in
themes, in the system-settings tool, but so far nothing has made any
difference to the emacs menu fonts.
I have just install emacs24-lucid, and the menu fonts are indeed
different - but this time big and bulky, instead of small and
spindly. However! this new emacs does play nicely with the editres
protocol, and so I may be able to change the menu fonts now by
editing my .Xresources file.
Thanks again, and I'll keep you posted.
-A.

[a***@gmail.com]

Many thanks. I installed emacs-lucid, and set

emacs24.pane.menubar.Font: Sans Serif:style=Normal:size=8

in my .Xresources file. This sets the menubar font to the same as used in my Qt applications.

And thanks for pointing out the xrm switch!

-A.