Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 44019
Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:33:37 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0) Description of problem: When starting X, I get the above message, and the URW fonts are not loaded in. Searching the web, I find a similar problem reported on a Mandrake list, where they claim that compiling with -fno-force-mem resolves the issue. I have not tried this fix. This problem occurs in Redhat 7.1, urw- fonts package. Below is the fragment reported on the similar Mandrake issue. >> It seems there are at least two problems with the fonts that add up >> to the uglyness: >> - Type 1 rendering is far worse than it used to be. Running 'xset +fp >> /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1' mostly reproduces the problems on a >> Mandrake 7.2 system, but the fonts still don't look /that/ bad. >This problem is caused by an actual bug in the type 1 font loading. >When compiling XFree86 (tested 4.0.2, 4.0.3 and 4.0.99) with >gcc-2.96-0.48mdk, you have to give the flag '-fno-force-mem' in >RPM_OPT_FLAGS. No problems with gcc-2.95.2 or egcs-1.1.2-44mdk. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.rpm -Uvh urw-fonts* 2.startx 3.check /var/log/XFree86.0.log or do xlsfonts and look for fonts in the URW package. Actual Results: no URW fonts, end of XFree86.0.log shows: Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1 Expected Results: should have gotten URW fonts. Additional info:
It's not a bug in urw-fonts
RH7.1 by default doesn't load the type1 module with XFree86-4. See the section from my XF86Config-4 file below: Section "Module" ... # Load "freetype" # TrueType font handler # Load "type1" # Adobe Type 1 font handler EndSection It relies on xfs to render the fonts. This means that type1 fonts can't be added using a xset +fp line (unless the comment is removed in the XF86Config file). This also means that apps which load their own type1 fonts break (eg StarOffice, abiword).
Running XFree86 4.1.0-3 to test this problem, in RHL 7.1, and also in RHL 7.2, I am not able to reproduce it, so I presume if there was an actual bug, that it has been long since fixed. I am using a more or less default XFree86 install, and using the xfs font server alone. The X server is not serving fonts - the only thing in the font path is xfs's socket. xfontsel allows me to choose the URW fonts, and displays them in the test area. We've just released XFree86 4.1.0-15 as erratum for RHL 7.1 and 7.2, so I'm closing this bug as fixed in errata.