Xboard Font

[Dan]

Upon a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.04 and attempting to install the latest developmental version of xboard, I get this upon any attempt to start.

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xboard: no fonts match pattern -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Am I missing a dependency?

[H.G.Muller]

Indeed, this is a complaint that often surfaces, even if people have installed the font package that is listed in the dependencies. It seems helvetica bold is not in the package it is supposed to be in.

I suppose you have the same problem with any version of XBoard? We did not change the fonts we use at any time.

I am not sure what can be done about it. I don't know what package the helvetica font is in, if it is in any package at all. I am not really a Lnux man, and I don't know how to check out which fonts one does have. I didn't seem to have this problem on my Ubuntu 8.04, but perhaps I was just lucky that some other package I installed happened to load the needed fonts through its dependencies.

Edit:
It seems you can list the fonts you do have with the command "xlsfonts".
With "xset q" you can see what paths the X-server will look in to search for font files. I get something like

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hgm@hgm-laptop:~/fboard/copy$ xset q
Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000000
  auto repeat delay:  500    repeat rate:  30
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffdfffdfe5ef
                        ffffffffffffffff
                        ffffffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  0    cycle:  0
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0    WhitePixel:  16777215
Font Path:
  /home/hgm/.gnome2/share/cursor-fonts,/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType,/home/hgm/.gnome2/share/fonts
Bug Mode: compatibility mode is disabled
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On
File paths:
  Config file:  /etc/X11/xorg.conf
  Modules path: /usr/lib/xorg/modules
  Log file:     /var/log/Xorg.0.log


It is possible that you do have the font package installed, but that the 'Font Path' is somehow set wrong. I found some useful info about X-fonts here.

[John Cheetham]

xboard: no fonts match pattern -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

I think you need the xfonts-100dpi or xfonts-75dpi package:
sudo apt-get install xfonts-100dpi

[Dan]

I have fixed the issue.

It is true that the problem is caused by the X11 server to fail loading new fonts by not adding newly installed fonts' directories to its search path.

To fix this, it is quite simple:

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xset q

Will display the current font path settings.

And then

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xset fp=

and copy your current settings, and then append where the new fonts were.
Mine were installed from the 100dpi package, or you could also use the 75dpi package, both of which were installed to /usr/share/fonts/X11

[H.G.Muller]

The link I gave also mentions that you can do "xset fp+ ...", which presumably adds to what was already there (so that you don't have to copy the existing paths).