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Set normal font (OSC 710)

Category: extensions · Baseline: legacy · Tags: Operating System Commands (OSC) · Specification ↗

ESC ] 710 ; font BEL
OSC 710 sets the terminal's normal (regular weight) font. The sequence is ESC ] 710 ; font BEL where font is an X11 logical font description (XLFD) or a fontconfig pattern. rxvt-unicode introduced a family of font-setting OSCs with different roles: OSC 711 for the bold font, OSC 712 for italic, and OSC 713 for bold-italic. Together they let applications swap the entire font set on the fly. Outside of urxvt this protocol is essentially unused — modern terminals tie font selection to user preferences and do not expose font swapping over escape sequences.
How this is testedpartial
Send OSC 710 ; fixed BEL and verify the terminal consumes the sequence (cursor position unchanged).

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-04-06

Supported by all 4 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Unicode baseline.

Supported by 6 of 14 backends (43%)

Terminal Applications

TerminalVersionSupportNotes
iTerm23.6.9✓ yes
Ghostty1.3.1✓ yes
Terminal.app2.15✓ yes
Kitty0.46.2✓ yes
VS Code1.113.0? unknown
Warp0.2026.03.18.08.24.03? unknown
Cursor2.6.21? unknown

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a means the parser accepts the sequence.

BackendVersionSupportNotes
Alacritty0.26.0? unknown
vt100.js0.2.1? unknown
vterm0.2.0? unknown
WezTerm0.1.0-fork.5? unknown
xterm.js5.5.0? unknown