Font for mac osx that is as readable and compact as the default xterm (X11) font

Question

The font used in xterms is extremely compact yet readable. What font is that? The closest I\'ve found that I can use in other other applications is DejaVu Sans Mono or Bit

Answer 1

X11 default fonts are usually bitmap fonts, which aren't of any use to non-X applications ... on my Mac box, the default font for X11 apps seems to be -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-70-iso8859-1, corresponding to the file /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/misc/7x14-ISO8859-1.pcf.gz

You can display the character table with the command /usr/X11R6/bin/xfd -fn -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-70-iso8859-1 and check if it's the one you see in your xterms. If so, I'm afraid there's nothing to do: PCF fonts are (very) low resolution bitmap fonts, and that's why they look so good on screen, by the way (they just fit with your particular screen resolution); but they're no way other Mac OS X applications are going to use them.