[R-sig-Fedora] Problem with X11 fonts under Fedora 17.

[Rolf Turner]

Please see end of message.

On 01/14/2013 04:32 AM, Marc Schwartz wrote:
> On Jan 12, 2013, at 6:08 PM, Rolf Turner<rolf.turner at xtra.co.nz>  wrote:
>
>> On 01/13/2013 12:48 PM, peter dalgaard wrote:
>>> Rolf,
>>>
>>> Like Marc, I'm getting rusty on the Fedora details, but it's possible that the X server or the font server needs to be reset before changes take hold. Possible "xset fp rehash" in a terminal window? Or maybe "service xfs restart".
>> I tried
>>
>>     xset fp rehash
>>
>> and that produced no response --- no error message, but no "acknowledgement"
>> either.  Then I tried
>>
>>     sudo service xfs restart
>>
>> and got
>>> Redirecting to /bin/systemctl restart xfs.service
>>> Failed to issue method call: Unit xfs.service failed to load: No such file or directory. See system logs and 'systemctl status xfs.service' for details.
>> So I then tried
>>
>>     systemctl status xfs.service
>>
>> and got
>>> xfs.service
>>>       Loaded: error (Reason: No such file or directory)
>>>       Active: inactive (dead)
>> Looks ominous, to say the least.  No idea what to do about it, but.
>>
>> Doing
>>
>>     yum search xfs.service
>>
>> gives
>>> Warning: No matches found for: xfs.service
>>> No Matches found
>> I hope *somebody* out there can point me in the right direction.
>>
>>     cheers,
>>
>>         Rolf
> Rolf,
>
> Did some searching in the list archives and going back a number of years (early 2000's), there are some threads involving both Peter and I in replies to users with similar issues.
>
> I don't know if Fedora still has this, but look for a file '/etc/X11/fs/config'.
>
> If that is present, look at the contents and see if there are lines in it such as:
>
> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled
> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled
>
> Ideally, you should [also] have:
>
> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi
> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi
>
> which are the unscaled versions of the font configuration spec. If you don't have the latter incantation, you might try to add them or edit the former lines to remove the ':unscaled' part.
>
> It is also possible that on more recent versions of Fedora, the paths have changed from the above.
>
> You will likely need to restart the X11 server after any changes and this will all need to be done as root of course.
>
> BTW, you might also check the config log that was generated when you first ran ./configure to see if there were any warnings about 'stuff' missing.

Firstly let me note that things have actually got a bit worse in some 
respects
since I've been fooling around ... I no longer get the error message, 
but not
text appears at all.  I just get those little dotted-line rectangles 
where text should
be.  This happens irrespective of the value of "cex".  If I set cex=2, I 
get a warning
> In text.default(2, 6, "Oh, hell!", cex = 2) :
>   X11 used font size 25 when 28 was requested

Also, no axis labels appear; again just those little rectangles.  I said 
in a previous
message that this happens when I use X11.options(type="cairo") but this 
is a red
herring.  I just didn't check carefully enough.  It happens with 
X11.options(type="Xlib")
as well.

Now to get to the /etc/X11/fs/config business:  There is no such file.  
A listing of
/etc/X11 gives:
> applnk/  fontpath.d/  prefdm*  xinit/ Xmodmap    xorg.conf.d/  Xresources

The only relevant item seems to be the directory fontpath.d.  A listing 
of this is:
> cjkuni-uming-fonts@   fonts-default@ 
> xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi:unscaled:pri=30@
> default-ghostscript@  liberation-fonts@ 
> xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi:unscaled:pri=20@

These are all symbolic links to corresponding directories in 
/usr/share.  I tried making
new symbolic links, e.g. from /usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi to 
xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi
(in the fontpath.d directory) and rebooted the laptop.  No difference.  
Finally I tried
removing the "*unscaled*" links, leaving only the new ones.  (And 
rebooted.) No
difference.

I am getting frantic.  Is there no-one out there who can give me a clue 
as to how
to resolve this problem?  Basically my system is now warped into a state 
in which
I cannot plot on-screen --- at least I cannot get *any* textual 
annotation in on-screen
plots.  Which makes the whole schmear pretty useless.  I am at my wits end.

     "cheers",

         Rolf