Comment 6 for bug 165039

I've re-opened the bug because I'd like gnome-terminal to be able to "see" xterm's bitmap font too, EVEN if bitmap fonts are turned off in the rest of the Gnome configuration. I'm not convinced that this is an upstream feature request only, since it was ubuntu decision to turn off bitmap fonts (Debian ships with bitmap fonts ON, for example.). Xterm/Terminal has a huge legacy in terms of history of using it, and people need small size fonts that its characters don't collide (something that's not possible with the current Ubuntu font engine and monospace TTF fonts). Therefore, the xterm font (whatever xterm is using), is preferable to many old timers. Maybe younger users don't care much, but people who use the terminal a lot, and have a bunch of them open in the screen, do.

So please either enable bitmap fonts on ubuntu by default (although I'm not advocating that this is a great idea -- it might have other repercussions), or, add some code on gnome-terminal to be able to "see" and use the xterm bitmap font in its Profile's font list dialog, even if the rest of the Gnome apps can't see that font. In other words, "special case" gnome-terminal, because in all truth, it's a utility that IS special -- in terms of 40 years of usage patterns.