Increase font size on Eterm terminal

It would help if you posted the contents of your user.cfg, however here is a short explanation:

• Eterm uses bitmap fonts
• It has (compiled-in) a list of common bitmap fonts, ordered by size.
• The same list is shown as comments in theme.cfg, e.g.,

    # Set the fonts.  These must be monospace fonts.  The values shown are
    # the Eterm defaults.  The "bold" font is the font used if color BD has
    # not been set and Eterm cannot map the foreground color to one of the
    # high-intensity colors (8-15).
    #    font default 2
    #    font 0 5x7
    #    font 1 6x10
    #    font 2 fixed
    #    font 3 8x13
    #    font 4 9x15
    #    font 5 10x20
    #    font 6 12x24
    end attributes

• If you have the fonts setup properly (or just use the defaults), then as noted in the manual page, shift+ (or shift-) tell Eterm to select a larger (or smaller) font from this list.

Normally the compiled-in list is good enough. There are a couple of issues:

• since it uses bitmap fonts, while the desktop applications use TrueType fonts, your machine may not have the bitmap fonts installed. As usual, package names across systems (and even releases) are poorly standardized. Debian has the fonts in xfonts-base; Fedora may have them in xorg-x11-fonts-misc.
• Those short names correspond to long (XLFD) names like this (looking at /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/fonts.alias):

    fixed        -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
    variable     -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
    5x7          -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--7-70-75-75-c-50-iso8859-1
    5x8          -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--8-80-75-75-c-50-iso8859-1
    6x9          -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
    6x10         -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
    6x12         -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--12-110-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
    6x13         -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
    6x13bold     -misc-fixed-bold-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
    7x13         -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-70-iso8859-1
    7x13bold     -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-70-iso8859-1
    7x13euro     -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-70-iso8859-15
    7x13eurobold -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-70-iso8859-15
    7x14         -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-70-iso8859-1
    7x14bold     -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-70-iso8859-1
    8x13         -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-80-iso8859-1
    8x13bold     -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-80-iso8859-1
    8x16         -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-120-100-100-c-80-iso8859-1
    9x15         -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso8859-1
    9x15bold     -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso8859-1
    10x20        -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-iso8859-1
    12x24        -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-170-100-100-c-120-iso8859-1

• As a general rule, you can use the aliases, or the XLFD names. Those can be shortened using * for a wildcard.
• Use xlsfonts and xfontsel for finding useful font names (not fc-list).
• If your machine does not have a font, Eterm cannot switch to that font.
• Eterm may not check if your list of fonts is actually in order by size.

Further reading:

• eterm fonts (a similar question, showing an example of user.cfg)

As you can read from the manual page of eterm, just use Shift and the + key or use the next parameter:

--big-font-key keysym
Specify a keysym to increase the font size. Default is Shift and the + key on the keypad. Ctrl-> or Meta-> may also work (if you #define one of the hotkeys in src/feature.h).

Source: http://www.eterm.org/docs/view.php?doc=man