[Xastir] Font troubles

[Curt, WE7U]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, Chip Griffin wrote:

> Is it possible to have the installer check which fonts are available and then 
> modify the new config file? Alternatively is it possible for Xastir to check 
> to see if the font is valid and if not then either select one that is valid? 
> Seems like there ought to be a way to make this smoother when installing the 
> first time. I must admit that it worked flawlessly for me.

"fixed" is supposed to be a font that can be relied upon.  It turns
out these days it can't.  I found two fonts aliases to "fixed", one
courier, one cyrillic, on my system.  Of course the system picked
the wrong one.

The next idea would be to use "-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
for the font.  This means the system chooses the font at startup.
That would probably result in more erratic behavior.

Yet another idea would be to use
"-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" as the default font.  Here
we specify only the parameters that are important and leave the rest
to the system.  In fact near the top of main.c:main() you'll see
"*.fontList: -misc-fixed-*-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*".  This font gets
used if we don't set the font.  But we do set the font.

In main.c:create_appshell() we have this code:

--------------------------------------
// Set up default font
     font1 = XLoadQueryFont(display, rotated_label_fontname[FONT_SYSTEM]);

     if (font1 == NULL) {    // Couldn't get the font!!!
         fprintf(stderr,"create_appshell: Couldn't load system font %s.  ",
             rotated_label_fontname[FONT_SYSTEM]);
         fprintf(stderr,"Loading default system font instead.\n");
         font1 = XLoadQueryFont(display, "-misc-fixed-*-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*");
         if (font1 == NULL) {    // Couldn't get the font!!!
             fprintf(stderr,"create_appshell: Couldn't load default system font, exiting.\n");
             exit(1);
         }
         else {
             // _Now_ we can do a popup message about the first error
             // as we have a font to work with!
--------------------------------------

So... We do give it a pretty good effort to come up with a font that
works.  The above is for the system font (menus and the like).  For
the station font we do this:

     Try to load font.
     If no-go, load this font instead:
     "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

If people have severe difficulty with the station font but not the
system font, I can make the fallback for the station font be
"-misc-fixed-*-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" as well.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
   Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"