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fontsx11mobaxterm

Default font sizes in X11 apps under MobaXterm V12

I use the free tier of MobaXterm on Windows to connect to our Centos/RHEL machines and to display X11 apps on the Windows desktop.

In the past I used MobaXterm V3 and it displayed X11 apps like PyCharm, Eclipse or VS code with appropriate font sizes. Here an sample portion of the PyCharm window under MobaXterm V3:

Fonts in Version 3

Now I upgraded to the current MobaXterm V12 and the fonts for menus and explorer panes are way too big:

Fonts in version 12

This happens not only in PyCharm, but in other X11 apps like Eclipse as well - and in apps on different remote machines. So it must have to do with the X server built into MobaXterm.

I compared the output of xset q under both X servers and got the following differences (in the graphics section of the xset output):

MobaXterm V3 : Font Path: /usr/share/fonts/misc,built-ins

MobaXterm V12 : Font Path: C:\Users\broleo\AppData\Local\Temp\Mxt121/usr/share/fonts/misc/,built-ins

I tried to set the font path in V12 via xset fp to the same as in V3, but it didn't help.

Any idea what to do to make the new MobaXterm V3 display X11 apps with fonts in a similar size as in the old MobaXterm V3?

Note: I know that most apps offer in-app preferences to change font sizes; but often this applies only to editor text, etc and it would need to be done for each app separately. I am rather looking for a tweak to MobaXterm V12 - after all V3 can do it!

Solution

  • Changelog for version 12.0

    Improvement: added a new X11 DPI setting in order to force X server DPI value (useful for HighDPI monitors)

    Go to:

    1. Settings
    2. Configuration
    3. X11

    And change value in DPI drop-down until you get the correct display.