xfig / fonts

[Bas van Gils]

Hi all,                                                                         
                                                                                
A few days ago I had to create a new xfig file for my dissertation on my        
laptop. Upon startup, xfig complained about not being able to find certain      
fonts. Indeed, when I started to enter text it appeared that xfig couldn't      
find a single font.                                                             
                                                                                
At first I thought I was missing fonts but a check learned that I had most of   
the essential packages installed (i.e. msttcorefonts, ttf-things and            
xfonts-things). Even more, the paths to the directories containing these fonts  
are listed in xorg.conf. Just to be on the safe side I made sure that each      
directory has a fonts.dir entry. After runing 'xset fp rehash' xfig seemed to   
work just fine. Great. After rebooting/ restarting X, however, the same         
problem occured again: xfig couldn't find its fonts.                            
                                                                                
Just to be on the safe side I used a second machine (also running Hoary) to     
verify that it wasn't a machine-specific problem. Also I had a buddy confirm    
that his box had the same problem.                                              
                                                                                
After googling again I learned that 'xset fp rehash' is supposed to be          
permanent in the sense that X should remember which fonts it has after a        
reboot/ restart. On a debian mailinglist (entry from 2004) someone had the      
exact same problem. His fix was to make sure that the 'xset fp rehash' command  
is run each time X starts using gnome-session-properties. Surely this works     
but it feels like a hack. Does anyone know how to solve the problem             
*properly*? Am I missing something? Any pointers are greatly appreciated.                                                                                       
                                                                                
Cheers, 

    Bas


-- 
<Bas.vanGils at cs.ru.nl> - GPG Key ID: 2768A493  -  http://www.cs.ru.nl/~basvg
Radboud University Nijmegen Institute for Computing and Information Sciences