Specifying the font in an R console - multiplatform solutions?

Question

This is fairly mundane as R questions go, but I would like to specify the font in my R console. It's easy enough to do in Windows - John Cook has an excellent little writeup on that.

However, that is specific for the Windows R GUI. I'm not able to find a way to do this (at least from within R) on RStudio, Linux, etc. Is there a global, platform-agnostic solution? If not, what would need to be wrapped to make this feasible given per-platform idiosyncracies?

Or is this infeasible?

Note that I'm interested in the font family, rather than the font size, though font size suggestions are welcome.

Edit: I plan to apply this inside a program, if possible. Since R can make calls to the shell, I am happy with a two-pass method that first configures external files in preparation for a subsequent invocation of R, if that is necessary.

Answer 1

No, each of the front-ends to R are responsible for the way that the console is displayed to the user. This will be inherently platform and front-end specific.

Answer 2

I believe that Gavin is right: this is set per frontend, and I fail to find anything for Linux. However, the standard R frontend for Windows is addressed in my question. Mac users may find this page helpful: Permanently change default console font.

So, the answers as I found them may be summarized as:

• Windows / default R - see John Cook's page
• Mac - see link above
• Linux / default R frontend - not possible (or am I wrong?)
• (Windows, Mac, Linux) / Rstudio - Font family is not available (yet) - see this page. Font size is - this page
• Windows / Revolution R - this page
• Other / Revolution R - not found

So, the universal trick is that I need to use R via a web server, and then I can configure my browser. :) Not going to happen. I'll wait on Rstudio.