[R] Another X11 problem. (Psigh!)

[James Cloos]

>>>>> "RT" == Rolf Turner <rolf.turner at xtra.co.nz> writes:

RT> Tried to do a plot just now and got an error:

RT> Error in text.default(2, 6, main, cex = cex) :
RT>   X11 font -adobe-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*, face 1 at size
RT> 16 could not be loaded

R asks the X server to use the server-side specified font, but your X
server does not know that font.

Most applications these days use client-side fonts.  That is, they have
freetype render the font locally and send a pixmap to the server for
each glyph.  As such, most distributions no longer bother installing
server-side bitmap fonts by default.  

The command xlsfonts will show what server-side fonts your X server
knows.  In particular:

  xlsfonts -fn -adobe-helvetica-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

will list all of the variations of adobe-helvetica your X server knows.

I'm not sure which fedora package you want.  My dist calls them:

    media-fonts/font-adobe-75dpi
    media-fonts/font-adobe-100dpi

The bitmap fonts have neither a 16pt nor a 16pixel version.  They do
have 17 pixel and 14 & 18 pt versions.  And the server will scale to
match the request.

See:

http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/grDevices/html/x11Fonts.html

for details on how to specify a server-side font which you *do* have
(use xlsfonts to see what those are).

Or you can switch to using cairo rather than xlib:

http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/grDevices/html/x11.html

That will let you use the fonts with which you probably are more familiar.

-JimC
-- 
James Cloos <cloos at jhcloos.com>         OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6