Description of problem: xmgrace shows all characters (eg. menus, buttons) as squares. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 5.1.21-9 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1.start xmgrace 2. 3. Actual results: all characters are shown as squares Expected results: readable text Additional info: The Grace FAQ has the following information: 5.11 All of the text in the menus and dialog boxes are represented as squares. This happens when a Unicode font is picked by the X/Motif and, for a reason, is treated as a wchar one (so you see one "square" glyph for every two chars). Try different font settings; for starters, run xmgrace -xrm "XMgrace*fontList:fixed" The workaround listed in the FAQ works. However, one should not have to do this. This is the first Fedora version where I see this problem. It worked without problems at least up to Fedora 7 (I skipped Fedora 8). The link to the type1 fonts from /usr/share/grace/fonts/type1 is OK. The font xmgrace seems to load (using strace) is /usr/share/grace/fonts/type1/n021003l.afm
That's strange, it works for me (on rawhide), and it seems that /usr/share/grace/fonts/type1/n021003l.afm and /usr/share/grace/fonts/type1/n021003l.pfb are used.
As you say, both the .afm and .pfb are used. All fonts in /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1 (where /usr/share/grace/fonts/type1 links to) come from the urw-fonts-2.4-5.fc9.noarch package. The locale used is en_US.utf8 but I do have german keyboard. Any ideas what I could check ? I am adding the strace output of a grace start that comes up with all squares instead of text as an attachment.
Created attachment 311873 [details] strace output of xmgrace start
This is a FC9 repeat of Bug 432572 (xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi package corrupts fonts in grace, lesstif), which linked the problem to the 75 dpi fonts installed by that package. These fonts are required to use EMACS. If you're like me and you don't use EMACS, you can remove it like so: yum remove xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi The menus in Grace will return to their former readable selves after this. The original bug is still unresolved, and was last updated in May. Perhaps this will get the ball rolling again!
I was unaware about this bug, thanks. Now it may become possible to reproduce it. however I am very short on time currently, without internet at home, so I will not be able to take care of this issue before some time.
(In reply to comment #4) > This is a FC9 repeat of Bug 432572 (xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi package corrupts fonts > in grace, lesstif), which linked the problem to the 75 dpi fonts installed by > that package. These fonts are required to use EMACS. > > If you're like me and you don't use EMACS, you can remove it like so: > > yum remove xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi > > The menus in Grace will return to their former readable selves after this. The > original bug is still unresolved, and was last updated in May. Perhaps this > will get the ball rolling again! I finally had time to try this and your suggestion of removing xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi (which also removes emacs) works. Grace fonts are readable again. Thanks. Of course it would be good to fix xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi so that it can work with emacs and xmgrace/lesstif. Just as a side note, every xmgrace invocation now produces the warning : Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" to type FontStruct
I was browsing fedoraforum.org and found the following: http://forumns.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=194538 The solution I like best is to install ALL the X11 fonts (which actually makes the menus in Grace look nicer anyway; it was apparently looking): yum install xorg-x11-fonts* This appears to solve the issue without disabling EMACS. It also gets rid of the missing helvetica-medium-r-normal error message. The solution to this bug is probably to make whatever font package is missing a prerequisite for installing Grace.
(In reply to comment #7) > I was browsing fedoraforum.org and found the following: > > http://forumns.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=194538 > > The solution I like best is to install ALL the X11 fonts (which actually makes > the menus in Grace look nicer anyway; it was apparently looking): > > yum install xorg-x11-fonts* > > This appears to solve the issue without disabling EMACS. It also gets rid of > the missing helvetica-medium-r-normal error message. The solution to this bug > is probably to make whatever font package is missing a prerequisite for > installing Grace. Thanks for this pointer (the URL you gave is misspelled. forumns->forums), but installing all xorg fonts is rather a sledgehammer like approach to the problem. I found that it is enough to install one of the 75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859 font packages to make xmgrace display text again while having emacs installed at the same time. Making xmgrace depend on one of these packages would be an intermediate solution to the problem. However, the only real solution is to find out why xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi causes the problem in the first place. BTW, I now think that the "cannot convert string" warning is unrelated. It seems to happen after the removal of a font package as long as the X-server has not been restarted.
*** Bug 432572 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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This seems to be fixed on F-11. Can anyone confirm this?
June22 Still a problem. Fresh install of FC11, accepted all 157 updates, installed the gcc and g++ compiler and the ddd debugger. Ran ddd, and all the text was spread out as dots all over the screen. Button labels, menus, tips, etc. all text was messed up. From suggestions in other bug rpts (this, 432572, 216160) I installed all the x11 fonts, but that did not change anything.
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