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I recently installed Arch Linux on my new laptop. Shortly, afterwards, I also installed the X Window System and Emacs 24. I like the DejaVu Sans Mono font so I added it to my .Xresources:

URxvt.font: xft:DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
emacs.font: xft:DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12

The font works perfectly for my terminal emulator URxvt, however when I start emacs this message popped up:

$ emacs
     Font `xft:DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12` is not defined

Apparently Emacs was built with xft, as shown below:

$ ldd `which emacs` | grep libXft
     libXft.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXft.so.2 (0x00007f8498c37000)

How can the font not be defined in emacs?

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4 Answers 4

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Stupid me, I had not installed the ttf-dejavu package in Arch Linux. I got sidetracked by the fact that urxvt did not give me an error message, which lead me to believe that it was something wrong with emacs.

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  • If this is the answer then please accept it (you can accept your own answer).
    – Drew
    Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 16:34
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    There is a waiting period of 36 or 48 hours or something like that before an original poster can accept his/her own answer.
    – lawlist
    Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 16:54
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You're confusing the font backend for the font naming syntax, probably because programs like urxvt require you to prepend xft: for specifying fonts by their family name. See its manual for more details.

Emacs only accepts XLFDs in that file, so try -*-DejaVu Sans Mono-*-*-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-* instead.

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  • I tried your suggestion and I got the same error: Font -*-DejaVu Sans Mono-*-*-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-* is not defined. I also tried to define the font in my .emacs file as such: (set-face-attribute 'default nil :family "DejaVu Sans Mono" :height 200) to no avail.
    – Perry
    Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 14:18
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You can set the default font by customizing your default-frame-alist. In your .emacs file, add the following:

(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist
             '(font . "DejaVu Sans Mono-12"))
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  • This gives the same error message but in the message box in emacs: Font DejaVu Sans Mono-12' is not defined
    – Perry
    Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 15:30
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I'd try

  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Monospace-12")))

But since having it in .emacs makes the first frame "flash" when it changes font in runtime I have this construct in ~/.emacs.d/early-init.el:

(when initial-window-system ;; i-w-s from stack exchange
  (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "EmblCondHack-13")))
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