Can't change gnome menu font

[marc]

I'm just logging this here, because I went looking for a solution and 
couldn't find it - at least, not a specific solution. Perhaps this is a 
bug report. Let me know.


When I logged in to Gnome, the menu, panel and Nautilus fonts were very 
small, tiny, in fact. However, I created another user, logged in, and 
the fonts were okay. Thus, the problem was account-=specific. I also 
discovered from this that:

  System/Preferences/Font/Application font

should change the size of the fonts in question. However, this 
preference did not change the menu font size in Gnome, although it did 
change the menu font size in, for example, Firefox.

I've been using KDE, and I became aware, from googling, that the 
package, gtk2-engines-gtk-qt might be the cause of the problem, because 
a number of folk had removed and solved a variety of KDE/Gnome-related 
font problems.

What happens is this:

Something in gtk2-engines-gtk-qt writes the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0. The 
contents of this file are controlled via the KDE KControl (or Control 
Centre) app - via Appearance and Themes/GTK styles and Fonts. In this 
applet, you can control two things:

- the GTK Style either: either the user's KDE style; or one of the 
installed Gnome styles - I had selected 'Human' in the account in 
question.

- GTK fonts: either the user's KDE fonts; or the user can select a 
single font family, font style and font size - I had selected to use my 
KDE fonts in the account in question.

For this account, here is the content of ~/.gtkrc-2.0:

====

  # This file was written by KDE
  # You can edit it in the KDE control center, under "GTK Styles and 
Fonts"

  include "/usr/share/themes/Human/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"

  style "user-font"
  {
  	font_name="DejaVu Sans 7"
  }
  widget_class "*" style "user-font"

  gtk-theme-name="Human"
  gtk-font-name="DejaVu Sans 7"

====

The 7pt font size and name is picked up from the KDE 'General' font 
preference.[1]

Now, in KDE, as set up, this all looks great. However, when I switch to 
Gnome, the small font problem rears its head.

To circumvent the problem in Gnome, the easiest way is to remove or 
rename ~/.gtkrc-2.0.[2]. In this case, all works normally within Gnome. 
However, this then presents a problem when logging back in to KDE.

It seems to me that Gnome should not be reading from ~/.gtkrc-2.0 at 
all - at least, not the gtk2-engines-gtk-qt edited part. But it does, 
although only at login, and not when launching apps. You can prove this 
by editing the font sizes in ~/.gtkrc-2.0 while in 
Gnome, then logging out and logging in. 

So, there you have it. Bug or feature?

Mark me down as a bug.

-- 
Best,
Marc

If god made us the way we are, how come he built us out of spare chimp 
parts?

[1] The attentive might wonder why menu fonts of 7pt work for me in KDE 
and yet appear tiny in Gnome. Good question. All I know is that they are 
very different sizes on the screen.

[2] You might be thinking that you can simply edit ~/.gtkrc-2.0 to the 
appropriate font size, however, each GTK app reads from when launched, 
so will exhibit incorrect font sizes. For example, Firefox will have 
*large* fonts, as will gvim.