Re: Sid & Openoffice (user interface font not working)
Ah! So I'm not the only one! Here's what I found and how I fixed (hacked)
it...
Both XF86Config-4 and XftConfig contained font paths including the following:
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
/usr/share/fonts/truetype
(among other path entries, including type1 and bitmapped fonts, etc.)
The weird thing is that "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType" didn't contain any
fonts. It only has the following files:
encodings.dir
fonts.dir
fonts.scale
These files contain information about the fonts in the
"/usr/share/fonts/truetype" directory.
OpenOffice.org (and Gnome) do NOT like the fonts and information files being
in separate directories! Gnome breaks much more gracefully, defaulting back
to a bitmapped or type1 font (I'm not sure which). But OOo really throws a
tantrum. It looks like it doesn't load any font at all. No menus, combo boxes
are about 2 pixels tall, typing into the document produces no discernable
results, etc.
The workaround was to create these 3 links:
* /usr/share/fonts/truetype/encodings.dir ->
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/encodings.dir
* /usr/share/fonts/truetype/fonts.dir ->
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/fonts.dir
* /usr/share/fonts/truetype/fonts.scale ->
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/fonts.scale
and remove "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType" from the font path in both
XF86Config-4 and XftConfig.
After that, restart X and everything will behave.
I don't know why the information files are in a different directory than the
fonts, or really why this fix works (other than fooling programs into
thinking all the files are together). If anyone knows why it works, or more
importantly, a better way to handle the problem, please let us all know.
HTH,
Warren Dodge
-----
This one time, at band camp, Chris Halls said:
(Thursday 12 September 2002 09:03 am)
> Hi Michael!
>
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 05:09:34PM +0200, Michael Meskes wrote:
> > I just upgraded my testing machine to unstable and installed KDE3.0.3.
> > All worked well except that openoffice no longer shows a single
> > character. That is there is no longer any character in the menues,
> > windows, etc.
> >
> > Did anyone else have such an effect? Yes, I know this is pre-unstable,
> > but it better does not happen once the packages come up to sid. :-)
>
> Yours is the third such report I've seen today - something must've gone
> wrong with fonts somewhere. The person I spoke on on IRC found that he
> could get it to work by removing fonts from the font path until it started,
> then changing the user interface font a la README.gz. That makes OOo use
> the font you ask for instead of automatically looking for a font... and
> finding one that doesn't work properly.
>
> It would be good to find out which font is being picked on these problem
> machines. I can't reproduce it here.
>
> Chris
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