# Curses / terminal builds and font settings

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/curses-terminal-builds-and-font-settings/7653>\
**Category:** The Garage\
**Created:** [October 24, 2014, 2:41pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/curses-terminal-builds-and-font-settings/7653 "2014-10-24T14:41:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tivasyk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/tivasyk/32/369_2.png) [@tivasyk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/tivasyk)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 2:41pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/curses-terminal-builds-and-font-settings/7653/1 "2014-10-24T14:41:25Z")

</div>

please help me understand how font settings work with curses / terminal builds of cdda; i’m thinking of the fresh experimental builds, namely 0.A 2276 (v. 76279a7) in my case.

base logic tells me it’s config/fonts.json file that i should be editing to change. a bit of experimenting (with windows version) tells me only these three lines actually matter:

`
    "fontwidth" : 12,
    "fontheight" : 12,
    "typeface" : "fixedsys",`

…as any changes to all the rest of lines just don’t produce any visible changes.

what i don’t understand though is that some of the fonts i’ve tried get displayed while other just make cdda fall back to some default font that i can’t identify (definitely not one of the three shipped with cdda). i’m trying a dozen of different ttf files.

am i missing something there? =(

p.s. some further experimenting shows that:

windows version:  
the 3 mentioned font.json options work to some extent, permitting at least to “squarify” any font:

`
    "fontwidth" : 12,
    "fontheight" : 12,
    "typeface" : "fixedsys",`

linux version:  
no cdda font settings apply, only the proper terminal’s setting work. no way to “squarify” a font, have to look for wide fonts that are both square enough and readable (currently only speculum font works more or less for me).