can't reduce default font size

[Matt Price]

Binary package hint: emacs22

don't understand emacs that well so hesitate to describe this as a bug, but:

By default, emacs displays a very large font when run under X.
I have followed various guides trying to get emacs to display a smaller font by default. In particular, I have the following in .Xresources:
$ cat .Xresources
Emacs.FontBackend: xft
Emacs.font: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-10

when i choose "set default font" from the Options menu, I am shown a font menu that indicates that Bitstream Vera Sans Mono 10 is in fact my default font -- but the font on display is much larger, and changing the default doesn't seem to have any effect. Meanwhile, M-x describe-font gives:
name (opened by): -bitstream-Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-normal-normal-normal-*-20-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1
       full name: -bitstream-Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-normal-normal-normal-*-20-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1
            size: 20
          height: 24
 baseline-offset: 0
relative-compose: 0

can someone please tell me what i have to do next? thanks, matt

[era (era)]

I haven't seen a font description like that in .Xresources before. To my (admittedly limited) understanding, you need to use precisely the "full name" listed by describe-font. But I don't have a font named like that on my system. I have, for example,

-bitstream-bitstream vera sans mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-iso10646-1

Note the differences in capitalization, and the zeros where you have * wildcards.

Adding this with xrdb -merge (along with your Emacs.FontBackend line) gets me the following, as per describe-font:

name (opened by): -bitstream-bitstream vera sans mono-medium-r-normal--17-0-96-96-c-0-iso10646-1
       full name: -bitstream-bitstream vera sans mono-medium-r-normal--17-128-96-96-c-103-iso10646-1
            size: 10
          height: 20
 baseline-offset: 0
relative-compose: 0

It's not very pretty compared to the Courier medium I get out of the box, without doing any customization:

name (opened by): -adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
       full name: -Adobe-Courier-Medium-R-Normal--17-120-100-100-M-100-ISO8859-1
            size: 10
          height: 15
 baseline-offset: 0
relative-compose: 0

This is on Ubuntu 8.10 i386, nvidia binary driver version 177.