Re: Setting font to Lucida Grande on Mac OS X

[Luc Teirlinck]

Andrew Choi wrote:

   do something like this:

   M-x set-frame-font RET -apple-lucida 
grande-medium-r-normal--12-0-75-75-m-0-mac-roman

I guess that gets rid of Sancho's concrete problem, but it does not
answer the following question:

Why does

M-x set-frame-font RET -*-Courier-*-120-*

work and

M-x set-frame-font RET -*-Lucida Grande-*-120-*

not?

Maybe `-*-Lucida Grande-*-120-*' really is unmatched (I can not
check), but look at the example below.

The difference between a user question belonging on `gnu.emacs.help'
and a question belonging on this site is that the answer to the former
could have been found in the standard documentation, in this case the
Emacs manual.

>From (emacs)Font X :

    You can use wildcard patterns for the font name; then Emacs lets X
    choose one of the fonts that match the pattern.

Not quite.  Emacs (or X) will not be able to find some fonts this way.
Neither will xlsfonts.  I guess that if I were an expert on fonts, the
example below would be obvious to me, but I believe that being an
expert on fonts should not be a prerequisite to being able to specify
a font for Emacs.

[bash2.05b.0 ~ 3 1] emacs-21.3.50 -fn
'-abisource-courier-bold-i-normal--17-120-*-*-*-*-*' 
No fonts match `-abisource-courier-bold-i-normal--17-120-*-*-*-*-*'
[bash2.05b.0 ~ 3 2] emacs-21.3.50 -fn
'-abisource-courier-bold-i-normal--17-120-*-*-*-*-*-*'
[bash2.05b.0 ~ 3 3] 

Why does the second line work and the first one not?  Does `*' not
match `*-*' anyway?  It does for `-*-Courier-*-120-*'.

Is it possible to tell in one or two lines in (emacs)Font X what is
going on here?  Or am I missing something truly obvious (even to non
font experts)?

Sincerely,

Luc.