Using Emacs XFT Support

1. Enabling Antialiased Fonts for Emacs

Note: Font anti-aliasing using the Xft library and FreeType fonts is currently only available for the app-editors/emacs-cvs-23.0.9999 ebuild.

You'll need to first unmask and keyword the emacs-cvs-23 ebuild – it's experimental and potentially unstable.

Code Listing 1.1: Unmasking emacs-cvs-23

# echo "~app-editors/emacs-cvs-23.0.9999" >> /etc/portage/package.unmask
# echo "app-editors/emacs-cvs" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

Next, set the appropriate USE flags - you must have the xft flag.

Code Listing 1.2: Adding appropriate USE flags

# echo "app-editors/emacs-cvs xft" >> /etc/portage/package.use

Now it's time to install the CVS version of emacs:

Code Listing 1.3: Emerging emacs-cvs-23

# emerge -av ~emacs-cvs-23.0.9999

You can now use XFT fonts in emacs; try emerging media-fonts/ttf-bitstream-vera first.

Code Listing 1.4: Enabling XFT fonts in emacs

$ emacs-23 --font 'Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-12'

If you're happy with this as your default font, set it in your ~/.Xresources:

Code Listing 1.5: Setting the default font for emacs startup

$ echo "Emacs.font: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-12" >> ~/.Xresources
$ xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

The emacs-cvs-23 branch is (currently) considered too unstable for production use; if you experience problems you may want to have a stable-but-not-antialiased version available as a standby. You can use eselect to switch between the various Emacs versions installed on your system.

Code Listing 1.6: eselect for switching emacs versions

(Check available versions)
$ eselect emacs list
Available GNU Emacs symlink targets:
  [1]   emacs-21
  [2]   emacs-22 *
  [3]   emacs-23

XEmacs is also installed

(Select the correct version)
# eselect emacs set emacs-23

Resources

For more details on Emacs with XFT pretty fonts, see: