[R] X11 font at size 6 could not be loaded

[Peter Dalgaard]

Wittner, Ben, Ph.D. wrote:
> I recently upgraded my OS to Fedora 8 from Red Hat Enterprise Work Station 3.
> Before I upgraded certain operations would produce a warning to the effect that
> a desired font was not available so one had been substituted, which was okay.
> After the upgrade to Fedora 8, the plotting operation halts midway through and I
> get the following error message:
> "X11 font at size 6 could not be loaded"
> This is not okay, because plotting does not complete.
>
> I've also gotten that message regarding size 8.
>
> In R, if it do getOption("X11fonts") I get
> [1] "-adobe-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
> [2] "-adobe-symbol-medium-r-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
>
> If from bash I do xlsfonts, I see that I have fonts that match, but the smallest
> seem to be 11 points:
> -adobe-helvetica-bold-o-normal--11-80-100-100-p-60-iso10646-1
> -adobe-helvetica-bold-o-normal--11-80-100-100-p-60-iso8859-1
>
> If I run the same program on my Fedora 8 system but use an X server on a Windows
> PC (Hummingbird X server), I have no problem.
>
> If I can't fix this, this is a disaster for me because some of the most common
> things I do are afflicted by this problem.
>
> Can anyone help me get adobe-helvetica 6 and 8 point fonts onto my system or
> give any other advice?
>
> Thanks very much.
> -Ben
>
> p.s., I also tried in R
> options(X11fonts="-misc-fixed-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*")
> but that resulted in
> Error in X11(display, width, height, pointsize, if (is.null(gamma)) 1 else
> gamma,  : 
>   invalid 'fonts' value
> when I tried to plot.
>
> p.p.s, here's my version information
> platform       i686-pc-linux-gnu           
> arch           i686                        
> os             linux-gnu                   
> system         i686, linux-gnu             
> status                                     
> major          2                           
> minor          6.1                         
> year           2007                        
> month          11                          
> day            26                          
> svn rev        43537                       
> language       R                           
> version.string R version 2.6.1 (2007-11-26)
>
>   
The usual suspect is that you do not have the unscalable fonts in both 
75 and 100 dpi:

xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi-7.2-3.fc8
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi-7.2-3.fc8
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi-7.2-3.fc8
xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi-7.2-3.fc8
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-2-75dpi-7.2-3.fc8
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-2-100dpi-7.2-3.fc8


-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark          Ph:  (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)                  FAX: (+45) 35327907