Changing the font in Aquamacs? - macos

Question

I've recently had a need to do a bit of lisp editing and I found the nifty Ready Lisp package for OS X, which is great, except Aquamacs automatically uses a proportional font (which is idiotic, IMHO) and I want to change it to a monospace font. However, I'm not really much of an EMACS user, and the preferences menu in Aquamacs is less than clear on where and how one might make such a change.

Answer 1

In Aquamacs 2.1, you can set the font through Options->Appearance->Font for Text Mode... That brings up the standard font chooser window, choose the font you like. Then, when you exit out of emacs (C-x C-c) you'll be prompted to save options, hit "y".

Answer 2

This is what I have in my .emacs for OS X:
(set-default-font "-apple-bitstream vera sans mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-mac-roman")
Now, I'm not sure Bitstream Vera comes standard on OS X, so you may have to either download it or choose a different font. You can search the X font names by running (x-list-fonts "searchterm") in an ELisp buffer (e.g. *scratch* - to run it, type it in and then type C-j on the same line).

Answer 3

From the EmacsWiki Aquamacs FAQ:
To change the font used to display the
current frame, go to the font panel.
You can do this with the keystroke
Apple-t, or via the menu: Options →
Show/Hide → Font Panel. Once there,
select the font you want.
To make the current frame’s font the
default, go to Options → Frame
Appearance Styles. Select “use current
style for foo mode”, where foo is the
mode of the current frame (e.g.,
foo=text for text mode), to use the
current style (including the font, but
also any other changes you’ve made to
the frame’s style) for all files of
this type. Select “use current style
as default” to use the current style
for all files for whose major mode no
special style has been defined.
There are also recommendations for monospaced fonts - Monaco or "Vera Sans Mono".

Answer 4

this is the one I use:
-apple-DejaVu_Sans_Mono-medium-normal-normal-*-12-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1
You can set it in .emacs file like:
(set-default-font "-apple-DejaVu_Sans_Mono-medium-normal-normal-*-12-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1")
You can download it from dejavu-fonts.org

Answer 5

Fast forward a decade, for recent Aquamacs like ver 3.3 please see the nice solution for setting a fixed-width by default at https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/45135/change-permanently-font-size-in-aquamacs
Here's the relevant bit for those who are REALLY impatient but please go upvote that answer, user #nega deserves credit here
(when window-system
(setq initial-frame-alist nil) ;; Undo Aquamacs forced defaults
(setq default-frame-alist nil) ;; Undo Aquamacs forced defaults
(aquamacs-autoface-mode -1) ;; Use one face (font) everywhere
(set-frame-font "Menlo-12") ;; Set the default font to Menlo size 12
;;(set-default-font "Menlo-12") ;; This would do the same.
)