Re: Emacs overflowed pure space

[David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>]

Stephen Berman wrote:

> What are "fixed" fonts?  Are you saying fontconfig cannot handle them or
> that my system simply lacks them?  Or that the xft backend cannot handle
> them but only the x backend?
> 

"fixed" in X core fonts actually names a monospace bitmap font, usually
concretely resolving to -misc-fixed-... . It's also the usual X server
default font for x core font rendering, typically the server won't even
start if it can't find it (IIRC there is an option to compile it into
the server).

try xlsfonts -l -fn fixed  or xfd -fn fixed

This bitmap font actually called "fixed" would only be available to
emacs via the emacs xft backend if you had enabled bitmap fonts in
fontconfig* as discussed in another recent thread, otherwise it would
only be available to emacs via the emacs x core font backend.

However, given your [Stephen's] other fc-list reports with the foundry
and family names of bitmap fonts merged together, I suspect on your
system (unlike mine at least at the moment) the name of bitmap fonts
that were called "fixed" under x core fonts might under xft wind up as
"Misc Fixed", "Sony Fixed", etc.  rather than "Fixed".

Therefore, even if you had bitmap fonts enabled in fontconfig, on your
system they might fail to match if the emacs xft backend asked for
"fixed". Similar to the way on your system, a particular bitmap font
under xft was apparently called "Adobe Helvetica" rather than
"Helvetica" and failed to match?

try (if you have fontconfig bitmap fonts enabled*):

fc-list : family foundry | grep -i fixed

On my system, when I enable bitmap fonts in fontconfig, that returns

Fixed:foundry=Misc
Fixed:foundry=Sony

I would currently predict, based on your previous posts, that it would
return on your system something more like:

Misc Fixed:foundry=Misc
Sony Fixed:foundry=Sony


* Again, bearing in mind that you probably _don't_ actually want them
enabled. :-)