Dear Sirs
I posted this question to "Unix for dummies" but got no answers, so I'm asking help from this group.

Whenever I bring up an xterm window on my laptop running Mandrivia Linux, the font in the xterm window is so small that it is practically unreadable !

What switches do I need to use with the xterm command

xterm -??

in order to make the font larger ?
I have already tried the suggestions provided by "xterm -help" but was not
successful.

Thanks

the general switch is xterm -fn <fontname>
to find what fonts are installed use 'xlsfonts' and select one. you will notice 2 naming convertions:
1. something like "-xxl-ledfixed-medium-r-semicondensed--39-120-75-75-c-180-iso8859-15"
2. like "tekfont0"
the second type is a an alias to the first one.

but you do not want to start your xterm with xterm -fn <sdd> everytime. so you can set the font inside .Xdefaults this file can be changed with an editor. see man xterm for defails or
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm (system defaults)