[Nix-dev] emacs-24.2: fontconfig related display problem

[Mathijs Kwik]

Christopher Howard <cmhoward2 at alaska.edu> writes:

I have this in ~/.emacs.d/gtkrc:
# Define the style ‘my_style’.
style "my_style"
{
  font_name = "Ubuntu 9"
}

# Specify that widget type ‘*emacs-menuitem*’ uses ‘my_style’.
widget "*emacs-menuitem*" style "my_style"



> With further research: The problem seems to be (near as I can tell) that emacs (through fontconfig) was looking for
> fonts in the standard X11 font directory, but no such directory exists, because the host system does not have X11.
> I was able to resolve this by using nix-env to install some font packages (such as liberation-fonts) to my local
> nix-profile, and then create a symbolic link with ln -s ~/.fonts ~/.nix-profile/share/fonts. After that link was
> created, emacs opens up with the fonts in the menus displaying correctly (near as I can tell).
>
> So, problem solved for me. What I'm not sure about, though: Is this just something I should be expected to do,
> because of my unique configuration, or does this suggest some configuration shortcoming in the Nix expression for
> emacs-24.2?
>
> (BTW, in case anyone was wondering: even though the system itself is headless (no X11) I use the X11 capable apps
> over SSH.)
>
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Christopher Howard <cmhoward2 at alaska.edu> wrote:
>
>     Hi. I just finished installing emacs-24.2. The graphical (gtk-based) version starts fine; however, the text in
>     all the menus (including the tiles) is garbled (more specifically, replaced by empty box characters). The error
>     given one the command line is:
>    
>     quote:
>     --------
>     (process:27651): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
>         Using the fallback 'C' locale.
>     Xlib:  extension "RANDR" missing on display "localhost:13.0".
>     Fontconfig warning: line 26: empty font directory name ignored
>    
>     (emacs:27651): Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. engine-type='PangoRenderFc',
>     script='latin'
>     --------
>    
>     I am not very familiar with Fontconfig. Please advise.
>    
>     System information:
>     Nix PM v1.3
>     All packages built from source
>     Local installation of Nix, Nix store dir, and Nix state dir (no admin privileges)
>     System running SUSE Linux with kernel 2.6.32
>
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