LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Slackware 14.0 64-bit Problem with Ghostview (gv) and Fonts

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Slackware 14.0 64-bit Problem with Ghostview (gv) and Fonts

I'm getting strange (at least to me) error messages using

Code:

gv filename.ps

Any PostScript file I've attempted this with spits out

Quote:

Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Cannot convert string "-efont-biwidth-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1,-gnu-unifont-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1,-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*,-jis-fixed-medium-r-*--16-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0208.1983-0,-*-*-medium-r-*--16-*-*-*-*-*-*-*,*" to type FontSet
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset

Huh?

Something I've missed somewhere?

I do have the Adobe Type Library installed (in /usr/local/share/fonts/Adobe) -- it's all PostScript -- along with other local font directories in /usr/local/share/fonts/[names] with the local.conf file in /etc/fonts (been working for years, those).

Plus I have

Code:

/var/log/packages/fontforge-20120731_b-x86_64-1_SBo

/var/log/packages/font-adobe-utopia-type1-1.0.4-noarch-1

/var/log/packages/font-bh-lucidatypewriter-100dpi-1.0.3-noarch-1

/var/log/packages/font-bh-lucidatypewriter-75dpi-1.0.3-noarch-1

/var/log/packages/font-bh-type1-1.0.3-noarch-1

/var/log/packages/font-bitstream-type1-1.0.3-noarch-1

/var/log/packages/font-ibm-type1-1.0.3-noarch-1

/var/log/packages/font-xfree86-type1-1.0.4-noarch-1

/var/log/packages/freetype-2.4.10-x86_64-1

Any ideas?

What's in /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/?

On my box, it's a link to /usr/share/fonts/Type1

Code:

ls /usr/share/ghostscript

9.05/  fonts@

ls -l /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Oct 18 12:19 /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts -> /usr/share/fonts/Type1/

And the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files are there.

Tiz a puzzlement

Is there a fonts.dir, fonts.scale & font.alias? If not, it doesn't see the fonts. cd to the directory and as root do
mkfontdir
mkfontscale

From the mkfontdir man page

Quote:

The file "fonts.alias", which can be put in any directory of the font-path, is used to map new names to existing fonts, and should be edited by hand. The format is two white-space separated columns, the first containing aliases and the second containing font-name patterns. Lines beginning with "!" are comment lines and are ignored.

Apparently, this goes back quite a ways (google gv missing font problem).

From July 2010: http://old.nabble.com/font-issues-td29164490.html -- the answer was libXt.patch, but it was for 1.0.7, not for 1.1.3 as in Slackware 14.0. Oh, phooey.

OK, so look at another one, from September 2010: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=634039. Lots of discussion about exactly the same problem (but Fedora-specific). There is one suggestion,

Quote:

Edward Sheldrake 2010-10-26 09:55:12 EDT

I don't think even the encodings in /usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings are read without the encodings.dir file, e.g. from my Xorg.0.log

FreeType: couldn't find encoding 'iso8859-13' for '/usr/share/fonts/sazanami/mincho/sazanami-mincho.ttf'

iso8859-13 is:
/usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings/iso8859-13.enc.gz

It is possible for encodings.dir to list the contents of multiple directories:
# cd /usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings
# mkfontdir -n -e /usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings -e /usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings/large

Of course, it's Fedora and it's from 2010 (so there's no /usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings directory in Slackware 14, but there are /usr/share/fonts/encodings and /usr/share/fonts/encodings/large, seemingly with the same content).

Subsequently, there is this post (referring to the above one):

Quote:

Roderick Johnstone 2010-10-26 11:24:28 EDT

Edward: Very many thanks.

The problem was in one of our local font directories. Your mkfontdir command in bug #634039 fixed it nicely.

Closing this report.

So, maybe that worked OK in 2010 but I'm reluctant to touch the font directories (might no hurt, but, boy do I not want to screw things up not knowing what I'm doing).

I'm going to keep digging -- it certainly is strange that the identical errors occur in Slackware 14 that were appearing years ago, eh?

Not really strange that the same error happened in the past, with similar consequences.

If you find a solution (in this case, running mkfontdir like I already suggested) check for it or do it. Otherwise, ignore the past. Have you fonts.dir wuith a line for each of your fonts?

Both fonts.dir and fonts.scale contain 593 indexes for the font files found in /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts (which is actually a symbolic link to /usr/share/fonts/Type1).

I have a 13.37 box (gv, ghostscript and ghostscript-fonts are the same versions on 13.37 and 14.0 and I'm doing compares to find any differences. None have turned up as yet.

try /etc/fonts/*.conf. IIRC, fonts.conf should be left alone, but you can add local.conf with any additions

OK, finally got a little bit schmarter; a Google search for "Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion" turned up the answer at http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docvie...id=swg21146408 -- it's the locale, stupid.

You know those warnings about UTF-8 in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh? Well, they're true -- you're going to get the messages from gv with a UTF-8 locale but if you put it back to LANG=en_US you don't.

Dammit.