From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Emacs Display Recangular blocks instead of fonts Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 11:43:03 +0900 Message-ID: <874ndpta6g.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1369622601 25823 80.91.229.3 (27 May 2013 02:43:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 02:43:21 +0000 (UTC) Cc: "emacs-devel@gnu.org" To: "Kumar, Amit" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon May 27 04:43:17 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UgnP3-0007sa-2H for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 27 May 2013 04:43:17 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:55746 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UgnP2-0008Gy-IT for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 26 May 2013 22:43:16 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:38960) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UgnOz-0008Gg-Eo for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 26 May 2013 22:43:15 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UgnOy-0005hb-BY for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 26 May 2013 22:43:13 -0400 Original-Received: from mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]:45252) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UgnOx-0005h9-QQ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 26 May 2013 22:43:12 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id F075E97096A; Mon, 27 May 2013 11:43:03 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id B40831A2697; Mon, 27 May 2013 11:43:03 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM undefined under 21.5 (beta32) "habanero" b0d40183ac79 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 130.158.97.224 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:159823 Archived-At: Kumar, Amit writes: > Cannot convert string "-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct > Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct These are the old-style "server-side" font objects. These warnings are from Xlib, and indicate that you have a badly configured installation of X11. It's not really an Emacs problem; your distro is broken. > What I don't understand is why is emacs resorting to these fonts, > if it has problems can't it use some other fonts to display a > normal screen? It should be doing so; I don't know why it doesn't. I would guess that Emacs is not able to find any fonts at all. You do seem to have the appropriate fonts installed in your file system (the ones in /usr/share/X11/fonts), so there's a problem with the X server. I don't recall exactly how modern X servers handle server-side fonts. You may need a separate "font server" running to use the bitmap and other old-style fonts you have installed. Look for a font-server package (or change distros, see below). > Fonts directory listed in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf This a configuration file for fontconfig, which is irrelevant to FontStruct. It's probable that your Emacs was built only with server-side fonts (21.4 is very old), but your server doesn't understand how to render them. So it substitutes boxes. The current series of Emacs is 24.x, and older Emacs versions are officially unsupported. That doesn't mean you won't get help, but it does mean that there are no problems with Emacs 21 where the default solution is anything but "Upgrade, then come talk to us". If upgrading is possible, you really should do so (for many reasons, not just to make it easier for us to support you). (Aside: If Scientific Linux [sic] distributes such an old Emacs, what other problems may be hiding in the distro? All of the main distros keep up with Emacs releases with a lag of only a couple weeks. Many provide a "bleeding edge" beta package as well. The evidence is strong that Emacs is both a valuable package and one that is easy to keep up to date. If Scientific Linux doesn't do so ....) > $ fc-list | grep -i "courier" > Courier:style=Regular > $ fc-list | grep -i helvetica > Helvetica:style=Regular These are again fontconfig specs; since fontconfig finds these fonts, that's strong evidence that your Emacs is too old to render them.