[nzlug] How does FC6's X Windows System specify fonts?

[Patrick Connolly]

Perhaps I just need some googling tips, but I can't find any
collection of information that tells me how I specify fonts and
colours for emacs in FC6.  It's always been tricky for me to find, but
this time I'm lost altogether.

Back when I started playing with Linux, it was sufficient to just have
a ~/.Xdefaults and it would be read when, say, emacs was started by
that user.  It even worked to have a different .Xdefaults in /root.
(I like to have emacs use different colours when run from root.)

Then (about RedHat 7.2 or so), it became necessary to specify the file
name as .Xdefaults.user (or some such, I don't remember exactly).
That changed shortly after when it bacame necessary to run xrdb with
the -merge switch to get it to take effect.

Sometime later, it became necessary to refer to emacs thus:

emacs-x*Background: DarkSlateGray
emacs-x*Foreground: Wheat

Previously, the '-x' part wasn't there.

Lately, I've been trying to use Fedora Core 6, but it seems as though
the '-x' stuff has been dropped again, but I can't figure out how the
fonts are to be specified.  In the X that comes with FC4, this works:

-b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans-12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-2
Sometime earlier, the font was described like this:
-b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-m-*-iso8859-1

But I can't work out what works with the X that comes with FC6.

There's probably the odd historical inaccuracy in the account I've
given.  Somewhere along the line there was the XF86/Xorg change.  

Where should I have been looking for this sort of information?  I'd
imagine it's not very different for other distributions.

Thanx

-- 
   ___     Patrick Connolly      
 {~._.~}   
 _( Y )_          Good judgment comes from experience 
(:_~*~_:)         Experience comes from bad judgment    
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