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.