[lug] RH 7.2 and xfs - some fonts not visible?

[D. Stimits]

Michael J. Hammel wrote:

> I've heard that the X Font Server for Red Hat was compiled with some 
> features
> disabled.  I've noticed that GIMP's builtin Text tools don't see some 
> fonts
> while it does see others - all in the same font directory. 
> Additionally, the
> FreeType plug-in for GIMP does see these fonts.  I believe this 
> plug-in is not
> dependent on xfs (the font server), so it would seem that my version 
> of xfs
> doesn't quite work as expected.
>
> Does anyone know how to fix this?  I have XFree86 4.1.0 on this Red 
> Hat 7.2
> box.

One possible hint is that every time a font is added to a directory, an 
index has to be rebuilt via mkfontdir. If this is not done, the font 
will not be seen. I have never used RH 7.2, so I don't know if that is 
the problem, but I believe that on RH 7.3 and RH 8.0 some of the font 
path directories have not had mkfontdir applied by default. I do not 
know how using a font server makes this any different in requirements 
from explicitly set font paths, but there will be X11 
warnings/complaints during startup if in any way it actually tries to 
work with those directories and mkfontdir has not been run. I believe 
you will find all of the font directories as subdirectories to:
  /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/

You can then attempt to run, in that directory, mkfontdir, naming as 
argument each relevant subdirectory, e.g.:
  cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/
  mkfontdir cyrillic

Then restart X11 and the font server too (I like to do "init 3" at the 
text console, then "init 5", which completely runs through the entire 
runlevel init scripts). If you look at relevant logs prior to doing 
anything, you might spot directories that are completely broken (never 
had mkfontdir run on them), but keep in mind that if a font was added to 
a directory that had mkfontdir already run on it, the font simply won't 
appear, and there won't be any error/warning messages. If you still have 
font problems, then you can be sure it isn't just this simple config 
problem.

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com