[plug] Gnome font problems on Debian

[Peter F Bradshaw]

Hi;

The following applies to a pretty much standard Debian 2.4 installation
with gsfonts 6.0-2, gsfonts-x11 0.16 and libgnomeprint-* 0.35-4:

I have a machine here which has been giving me grief with the fonts. It
started when I added some font packages (deb).

After I had added the fonts I found that many Gnome packages could not
access fonts that where on the system previously and had not been
disturbed. For instance Dia could not find any of the fonts it required
and dropped back to "Fixed". This is despite the fact that xfontsel
could find the fonts that Dia claimed where missing.

There where some non Gnome apps which also showed problems. For instance
xpdf failed for the lake of fonts.

I fixed this problem by forcing a removal and reinstallation of gsfonts
and gsfonts-x11. This immediately fixed the problems with Dia and the
other Gnome and non Gnome apps. However, during the reinstallation of
the gsfonts, the installation scripts failed. This was caused by
gnome-font-install SEGV ing. Investigating this I found that it was
failing on the file /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052004l.pfb. Moving
this file, and its afm, out of the way allowed the scripts to run to
completion.

The situation is that now the font system appears to be working OK.
However I find it hard to believe that there is a problem in the
distribution with p052004l (otherwise this problem would have been
reported long before now). I suspect that I have not fixed the real
problem and it is still lurking down below and will eventually cause
problems in the future.

I need to button this system up if possible. I'm wondering if anybody
else has had similar problems with fonts on this Debian release? If so
can you offer advice or insight?

Thanks

-- 
Peter F Bradshaw, pfb at exadios.com, ICQ 75431157 (exadios).
http://www.exadios.com
PGP public key at http://www.exadios.com/public_key.html
"I love truth, and the way the government still uses it occasionally to
 keep us guessing.  " - Sam Kekovich.
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