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Changing the font in Pentadactyl @ 16 Mar 2013

Pentadactyl is excellent (I've posted about it before) – but depending on your system, the font used in its UI elements might not have optimal defaults. In particular, one might wish to change the monospace font face and size.

Font face

If you have a favorite monospace font, then likely you'll want to use that font in Pentadactyl, too. While Pentadactyl's :hi command can be used to use different fonts in different locations, the simplest way to drop in your favorite font is to apply it to all areas in the UI that make use of a monospace font.

Pentadactyl's default monospace font is actually just that of Firefox itself. Since different systems will have different fonts installed, I prefer to dictate my preferred font by setting it in Firefox.

From Pentadactyl, open the Firefox preferences using :dialog preferences. Then go to the "Content" tab, look for the "Fonts & Colors" section, and click the "Advanced" button. Here you can set your preferred monospace font.

Restart Firefox, and (assuming no other overrides) Pentadactyl will begin using the font you specified.

Font size

Changing the default monspace font size in Firefox settings does not seem to effect that used by Pentadactyl; therefore, we'll turn to the FontFixed style group, which applies to some – but not all – areas of the Pentadactyl UI that use a monospace font. Fortunately, it is easy to tell Pentadactyl to apply FontFixed styling to other groups.

Replacing 9pt with your preferred font size, and the following to your .pentadactylrc:

hi FontFixed -append font-size: 9pt !important;

" some groups -- such as `CmdLine` and `StatusLine` -- are linked by default
hi -append -link FontFixed Hint
hi -append -link FontFixed CompItem
hi -append -link FontFixed CompTitle