When urxvt is launched directly a nice looking font is used:But when it is launched by x-terminal-emulator an ugly cramped font is used:But x-terminal-emulator is just a symlink which eventually resolves to /usr/bin/urxvt:ls /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator -l         lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 37 Jun 19  2016 /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator -> /etc/alternatives/x-terminal-emulatorls /etc/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator -llrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Mar 16 08:14 /etc/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator -> /usr/bin/urxvtandwhich urxvt/usr/bin/urxvtIf it matters I'm running Ubuntu 16.04, with urxvt version 9.21.
Why does urxvt appear different when run through x-terminal-emulator?
x11;rxvt;x resources
It's probably seeing the symbolic link as an alias which changes the instance name, and using that as a (mis)clue is missing the X resource file (and using just its fallback resources).