So, how does XEmacs frob italic fonts? I have the following resources: *font: -b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans-12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1 Emacs.italic.attributeFont: -adobe-courier-medium-o-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1 And yet the following (defface gnus-emphasis-bold-italic '((t (:bold t :italic t))) "Face used for displaying bold italic emphasized text (/*word*/)." :group 'gnus-article-emphasis) gives me this: gnus-emphasis-bold-italic black Gainsboro -*-fixed-medium-i-*--16-*-iso8859-1 Which isn't very useful. Now, the manual says: All text is displayed in some face, defaulting to the face named `default'. To set the font of normal text, use `Emacs*default.attributeFont'. To set it in the frame named `fred', use `Emacs*fred.default.attributeFont'. If I put something like Emacs*italic.attributeFont: -b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans-12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1 then I get the following warning: (2) (resource/warning) Bad resource specification encountered: something like Emacs*italic.attributeFont: -b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans-12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1 You should replace the * with a . in order to get proper behavior when you use the specifier and/or `set-face-*' functions. And I still get the "fixed" italic font. The `italic' font looks OK in any case; it's just the deffaced italic fonts that look ugly. -- (domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.) larsi(a)ifi.uio.no * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen