font missing

font missing

[John P. Burkett]

I've been happily using emacs on a Gentoo-Linux machine for several
years.  The font I liked was specified in my .emacs file with the line
(set-default-font "10x20").
After a recent upgrade of Gentoo, this font specification did not work
as before.  Using the old .emacs file and doing "emacs --debug-init" now
produces a message that starts as follows:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable no)
  eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*> nil "/home/john/.emacs" nil t)  ;
Reading at buffer position 3358
  load-with-code-conversion("/home/john/.emacs" "/home/john/.emacs" t t)
  load("~/.emacs" t t)
  #[nil "

Doing "xlsfonts -l 10x20" at the Gentoo prompt elicits this response:
DIR  MIN  MAX EXIST DFLT PROP ASC DESC NAME
-->    0  255  some    0   23  15    5
-cronyx-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-koi8-r

Interpreting this as a translation of the nickname 10x20 into the long
name, I edited my .emacs file, replacing
(set-default-font "10x20")
with
(set-default-font
"-cronyx-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-koi8-r")

With that change done, emacs starts without any error message. However,
the font is not quite the same as the old one. The old font had no
serifs except on the letters i and l, where they avoid confusion with
the number 1.  The new font has serifs on most letters and, to my eye,
looks unnecessarily cluttered.

With emacs running, I tried holding down the shift key and clicking the
left mouse button. That as expected brought up a font menu. Selecting
"Misc 10x20" elicited the response "Font not found."

Suggestions for recovering the old "10x20" font would be appreciated.

-John

-- 
John P. Burkett
Department of Economics
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, RI 02881-0808
USA

phone (401) 874-9195

Re: font missing

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 11.06.2009 um 04:16 schrieb John P. Burkett:

> Suggestions for recovering the old "10x20" font would be appreciated.


The fonts in the fonts menu are set in GNU Emacs' source code – since  
decades (presumingly).

It is possible that your Gentoo PC still has these first generation  
bitmap fonts and it's just that these are not made available because  
the "font path" value is so short ('xset q' will show it), which you  
can change, for example in ~/.xinitrc. First step should be to  
determine where this font resides (file name might be share/fonts/ 
misc/10x20-ISO8859-15.pcf.gz for an ISO 8859-15 or Latin 9 8-bit  
encoding, or fonts/cyrillic/koi10x20.pcf.gz for some Cyrillic  
encoding, so a 'locate 10x20' should list the files). And, of course,  
it would be fine to find out whether the X server delivers the fonts  
or the client side, libfontconfig with programmes like fc-list or fc- 
cache and configuration files like fonts.conf, is doing the job.

In GNU Emacs you should be able to list all the fonts it sees in a  
volatile *Completions* buffer with:

	M-x set-frame-font RET TAB TAB

(It's best to imagine a file name for the volatile *Completions*  
buffer first and save it at once under this name.)

--
Greetings

   Pete

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

Re: font missing

[John P. Burkett]

Peter Dyballa wrote:
> 
> Am 11.06.2009 um 04:16 schrieb John P. Burkett:
> 
>> Suggestions for recovering the old "10x20" font would be appreciated.
> 
> 
> The fonts in the fonts menu are set in GNU Emacs' source code – since
> decades (presumingly).
> 
> It is possible that your Gentoo PC still has these first generation
> bitmap fonts and it's just that these are not made available because the
> "font path" value is so short ('xset q' will show it), which you can
> change, for example in ~/.xinitrc. First step should be to determine
> where this font resides (file name might be
> share/fonts/misc/10x20-ISO8859-15.pcf.gz for an ISO 8859-15 or Latin 9
> 8-bit encoding, or fonts/cyrillic/koi10x20.pcf.gz for some Cyrillic
> encoding, so a 'locate 10x20' should list the files).

Doing "locate 10x20" generates the following response:

/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-alt-iso8859-15-10x20-bold.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-alt-iso8859-15-10x20.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-alt-iso8859-9-10x20-bold.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-iso8859-2-10x20-bold.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-alt-iso8859-1-10x20-bold.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-alt-iso8859-2-10x20.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-iso8859-2-10x20.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-iso8859-9-10x20-bold.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-iso8859-15-10x20.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-iso8859-15-10x20-bold.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-alt-iso8859-9-10x20.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-iso8859-9-10x20.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-alt-iso8859-1-10x20.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-iso8859-1-10x20.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-iso8859-1-10x20-bold.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/jmk/neep-alt-iso8859-2-10x20-bold.pcf.gz
/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/misc/koi10x20.pcf.gz

I'm not sure how to ask emacs to use any of those fonts.

 And, of course, it
> would be fine to find out whether the X server delivers the fonts or the
> client side, libfontconfig with programmes like fc-list or fc-cache and
> configuration files like fonts.conf, is doing the job.
> 
> In GNU Emacs you should be able to list all the fonts it sees in a
> volatile *Completions* buffer with:
> 
>     M-x set-frame-font RET TAB TAB
> 
> (It's best to imagine a file name for the volatile *Completions* buffer
> first and save it at once under this name.)

Toward the bottom of the Completions buffer, I see "10x20". Clicking on
it with the left mouse button produces the message "Font `10x20` is not
defined".

What should I try next?

Best regards,
John


> 
> -- 
> Greetings
> 
>   Pete
> 
> If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
John P. Burkett
Department of Economics
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, RI 02881-0808
USA

phone (401) 874-9195

Re: font missing

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 11.06.2009 um 15:37 schrieb John P. Burkett:

> Doing "locate 10x20" generates the following response:
>
> [...]
>
> I'm not sure how to ask emacs to use any of those fonts.

You do nothing. Your system has to know and to provide them. So you  
should add the path to the fonts to your font sub-system(s), if not  
already included, and re-initialise it or them.

>>     M-x set-frame-font RET TAB TAB
>>
>> (It's best to imagine a file name for the volatile *Completions*  
>> buffer
>> first and save it at once under this name.)
>
> Toward the bottom of the Completions buffer, I see "10x20".  
> Clicking on
> it with the left mouse button produces the message "Font `10x20` is  
> not
> defined".

So something is not OK with your Gentoo system. Could be the font sub- 
system(s) work off stale cache files. (sudo) mkfontscale and (sudo)  
mkfontdir and the font files' directories renews them X11, (sudo) fc- 
cache [-v] renews them for libfontconfig. The -v option will show  
where libfontconfig looks for fonts (if you don't want to read the  
configuration files).

>
> What should I try next?


Find out which font sub-system supplies the font you picked and why  
this font is not available for real use. I'm not sure whether X11  
provides a way to find the path to the file which provides the font,  
fc-list can do it with 'fc-list : file family fullname' + some  
filtering.

Xfontsel and xfd are X clients which can display fonts. FontForge is  
an external add-on which can do much more with fonts. On the command  
line xlsfonts and fc-list can list myriads of fonts, either those  
from the X server or those from libfontconfig service. (Of course the  
one font sub-system can provide the fonts from the other, if properly  
configured.)

--
Greetings

   Pete

We have to expect it, otherwise we would be surprised.