Bad font quality in urxvt, only when using the -name option

Question

I'm playing around with the layout saving feature of i3. For that I want to assign names to urxvt instances that I launch. However, whenever I use the -name option, the font is displayed differently.

If for example I use

urxvt -e ncmpcpp -s playlist

The fonts look different to when I use

urxvt -name topleft -e ncmpcpp -s playlist

Does anyone know why that is? I can upload screenshots if necessary, it's just that font rendering looks bad when I give the -name option. Color theme etc. is as it should be. And it's no issue with ncmpcpp, the "dropdown" terminal in my i3 config has the same problem.

Answer 1

You evidently configured the font for a specific application instance rather than for an application class. Instance and class are concepts of X resources. The -name command line parameter sets the instance name (defaulting to the name of the executable); the class name is always URxvt (plus Rxvt used as a fallback).

In X resource names, conventionally, class names start with an uppercase letter and instance names start with a lowercase letter.

To make your settings always apply, set URxvt.font rather than urxvt.font, etc.

Answer 2

It's in the manual page:

-name name
Specify the application name under which resources are to be obtained, rather than the default executable file name. Name should not contain '.' or '*' characters. Also sets the icon and title name.

When you change the application name, it cannot find the resource-file which tells which fonts to use.

You might find this more useful:

-title text
Window title (-T still respected); the default title is the basename of the program specified after the -e option, if any, otherwise the application name; resource title.