Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Ronald Fischer]

I'm using Xming as X server. 

xlsfonts lists the following fonts as available:

-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--0-0-75-75-c-0-iso8859-1
-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-100-100-100-c-60-iso8859-1
-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
6x13
cursor
fixed

In the nedit preferences, I set the primary font to 

   -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1

and then clicked on "Fill highlight fonts from primary".

However, when I invoke Cygwin's 'nedit', I get the error messages:

 Cannot convert string
 "-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type
 FontStruct
Cannot convert string
"-*-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct
Cannot convert string
"-*-helvetica-medium-o-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type
FontStruct
Cannot convert string
"-*-courier-medium-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct
Cannot convert string "-*-courier-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1"
to type FontStruct
Cannot convert string
"-*-courier-medium-o-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct

I wonder why nedit is searching for "helvetica" and "courier" fonts.
What's the best to do in this case?

Just for completeness (though it likely doesn't matter here): I also
searched the Xming documentation. There is a command (mkfontscale) which
makes Windows fonts available to X. I have executed it, and it created a
file c:\windows\fonts\fonts.dir, which seems to be a mapping between
Windows font files (.TTF,  .FON) and X font names. I don't know if or to
what extend this could help me with the nedit problem; in any case, this
list also doesn't contain "helvetica" or "courier".

Ronald
-- 
Ronald Fischer <ronaldf@eml.cc>
+  If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, 
+  and the bus is interrupted and the interrupt's not caught,
+  then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
+		(cited after Peter van der Linden)


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Re: Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Yaakov (Cygwin/X)]

On 2012-05-18 07:42, Ronald Fischer wrote:
> I'm using Xming as X server.

This is not a support forum for Xming.


Yaakov
Cygwin/X

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Re: Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Ronald Fischer]

On Fri, May 18, 2012, at 13:37, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
> On 2012-05-18 07:42, Ronald Fischer wrote:
> > I'm using Xming as X server.
> 
> This is not a support forum for Xming.
> 

But for the cygwin X applications. I think nedit must have a reason to
look for these fonts which I have never specified somewhere .... As far
I can see, Xming is not involved here (and I just mentioned it in *case*
it is important).

Basically, I could imagine two approaches to solve this: Either tell
nedit not looking for these fonts, or installing these fonts in a place
that nedit can find them. In both cases I don't know how to do it;
that's why I posted it her.

Posting it to a Xming forum doesn't make that much sense (I think),
because the response there would likely be "This is not a support forum
for Cygwin"....


Ronald
-- 
Ronald Fischer <ronaldf@eml.cc>
+  If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, 
+  and the bus is interrupted and the interrupt's not caught,
+  then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
+		(cited after Peter van der Linden)


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Re: Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Yaakov (Cygwin/X)]

On 2012-05-19 05:20, Ronald Fischer wrote:
> But for the cygwin X applications. I think nedit must have a reason to
> look for these fonts which I have never specified somewhere .... As far
> I can see, Xming is not involved here (and I just mentioned it in *case*
> it is important).

In fact, it is.  nedit, like other old Motif (and Xaw) applications, 
depends on server-side fonts.  (Modern GUI toolkits, such as GTK+ and 
Qt, use client-side fonts via fontconfig or a wrapper thereto.) 
Therefore, you must install fonts where Xming will find them, and hence 
this is not an issue per se with nedit or Cygwin/X.


Yaakov
Cygwin/X

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Re: Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Ronald Fischer]

On Sat, May 19, 2012, at 23:18, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
> On 2012-05-19 05:20, Ronald Fischer wrote:
> In fact, it is.  nedit, like other old Motif (and Xaw) applications, 
> depends on server-side fonts.  (Modern GUI toolkits, such as GTK+ and 
> Qt, use client-side fonts via fontconfig or a wrapper thereto.) 
> Therefore, you must install fonts where Xming will find them, and hence 
> this is not an issue per se with nedit or Cygwin/X.

I understand, and I'll have a look there! Actually, I thought that fonts
are independent of the acutal implementation of the X-Server. I now see
that I was wrong.

The question remains, why nedit looks at *those* fonts. I'm perfectly
happy to specify in the preferences of nedit only those fonts which are
actually installed with Xming. However, nedit seems to look at certain
fonts, which I certainly have not mentioned in my preferences....

Ronald
-- 
Ronald Fischer <ronaldf@eml.cc>
+  If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, 
+  and the bus is interrupted and the interrupt's not caught,
+  then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
+		(cited after Peter van der Linden)


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Re: Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Yaakov (Cygwin/X)]

On 2012-05-20 05:07, Ronald Fischer wrote:
> The question remains, why nedit looks at *those* fonts. I'm perfectly
> happy to specify in the preferences of nedit only those fonts which are
> actually installed with Xming. However, nedit seems to look at certain
> fonts, which I certainly have not mentioned in my preferences....

Fonts are also required for rendering the interface (menus and dialog 
boxes).


Yaakov
Cygwin/X

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Re: Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Ronald Fischer]

On Sun, May 20, 2012, at 14:19, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
> On 2012-05-20 05:07, Ronald Fischer wrote:
> > The question remains, why nedit looks at *those* fonts. I'm perfectly
> > happy to specify in the preferences of nedit only those fonts which are
> > actually installed with Xming. However, nedit seems to look at certain
> > fonts, which I certainly have not mentioned in my preferences....
> 
> Fonts are also required for rendering the interface (menus and dialog 
> boxes).

True, but this does not apply here (I think), because I when I instruct
nedit to
use specific fonts (those which are installed on my system) for the
interface,
nedit indeed uses these fonts, but still displays the error message.

Meanwhile I found something in the Cygwin/X FAQs about this problem (I
had
overlooked it the first time): This seems to be a well known problem
with some
X applications, and it was recommended to install certain adobe fonts
via Cygwin
setup.

So I run setup again to install the required fonts, and also (via xset)
did a refresh
of the font path. The problem still persisted. Looking at the installed
fonts, I found
my fonts being present only in /usr/share/fonts/100dpi and
/usr/share/fonts/75dpi
as a bunch of gz-files. I'm not sure whether this is correct (i.e.
whether the X server
is supposed to unpack them on demand), or whether the Cygwin setup
script is
supposed to do this. I think it is the latter, because when I did a 

  xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts

I got the error message

xset:  bad font path element (#90), possible causes are:
    Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
    Directory missing fonts.dir
    Incorrect font server address or syntax

Could it be that part of the installation is missing on the Cygwin side?
In a correct installation,
where are these fonts supposed to be stored?

Ronald
-- 
Ronald Fischer <ronaldf@eml.cc>
+  If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, 
+  and the bus is interrupted and the interrupt's not caught,
+  then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
+		(cited after Peter van der Linden)


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Re: Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Ronald Fischer]

On Sun, May 20, 2012, at 14:19, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
> On 2012-05-20 05:07, Ronald Fischer wrote:
> Fonts are also required for rendering the interface (menus and dialog 
> boxes).

Update:

Yaakov, I just found out that you were right in your assumption that
there *is* at least one part in the nedit user interface which DOES use
preset fonts (which can't be changed): It's how the file names are
rendered in the "open file dialogue". So this indeed explains the
warning I get.

What still reminds to do is to install the missing fonts properly - see
my previous posting to see what I attempted for this task.

Ronald
-- 
Ronald Fischer <ronaldf@eml.cc>
+  If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, 
+  and the bus is interrupted and the interrupt's not caught,
+  then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
+		(cited after Peter van der Linden)


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RE: Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Kiehl, Horst]

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Ronald Fischer wrote [text rewrapped]:

> So I run setup again to install the required fonts, and also (via
> xset) did a refresh of the font path. The problem still persisted.
> Looking at the installed fonts, I found my fonts being present only
> in /usr/share/fonts/100dpi and /usr/share/fonts/75dpi as a bunch of
> gz-files. I'm not sure whether this is correct (i.e. whether the X
> server is supposed to unpack them on demand), or whether the Cygwin
> setup script is supposed to do this. I think it is the latter,
> because when I did a
> 
>   xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts
> 
> I got the error message
> 
> xset:  bad font path element (#90), possible causes are:
>     Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
>     Directory missing fonts.dir
>     Incorrect font server address or syntax

My guess is that you get this message because the directories in the
font path are from the viewpoint of the server. If your Xming
installation is on the same computer as your Cygwin installation and
the latter is under C:\cygwin, your command
    xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts
would translate to something like
    xset fp+ c:/cygwin/usr/share/fonts
The actual format expected by Xming might differ; see the output of
    xset q
for its font path. You might need to experiment a little.

Additionally, if I remember correctly, each directory containing a
fonts.dir file must be specified in the font path explicitly (i.e. the
directories in the font path are not searched recursively). So the
font path extension you need is possibly rather something like
    xset fp+ c:/cygwin/usr/share/fonts/75dpi,c:/cygwin/usr/share/fonts/100dpi

Horst

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Re: [SOLVED] Why does nedit complain about these missing fonts?

[Ronald of Steiermark]

On Mon, May 21, 2012, at 17:30, Kiehl, Horst wrote:
> Ronald Fischer wrote [text rewrapped]:
> >   xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts
> > 
> > I got the error message
> > 
> > xset:  bad font path element (#90), possible causes are:
> >     Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
> >     Directory missing fonts.dir
> >     Incorrect font server address or syntax
> 
> My guess is that you get this message because the directories in the
> font path are from the viewpoint of the server. If your Xming
> installation is on the same computer as your Cygwin installation and
> the latter is under C:\cygwin, your command
>     xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts
> would translate to something like
>     xset fp+ c:/cygwin/usr/share/fonts

You are right - now it's so obvious!!!! I could bang my head against the
wall!

> Additionally, if I remember correctly, each directory containing a
> fonts.dir file must be specified in the font path explicitly (i.e. the
> directories in the font path are not searched recursively). 

Indeed, this is the case! Thank you for pointing it out.

Now by doing 

  xset fp+ $(cygpath -w /usr/share/fonts/100dpi)

the nedit messages about missing fonts are gone! Thanks for helping!

Ronald
-- 
Ronald Fischer <austria_rules@yepmail.net>

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.


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